Arrived in one piece - so did all of my luggage.

Arrived in Brussels to a beautiful, sunny, 30C day. No complaints about that. The Qatar Airways flights were great, both legs seemed to be on new planes, or new to me anyway, very comfortable spacious seating so no complaints there then. I guess its the nature of air travel these days but airports are continually expanding and changing, Brussels is no exception. So when I thought I knew where I was going and where everything was I was wrong! It's not major but after flying for 24 hours you want it all to be as painless as possible. Brussels airport has added new baggage carousels in an annexe! and changed the oversized baggage arrangements but without significant signage, however my bike arrived OK this time and I was through Customs in a flash only to pile up in a queue at the car rental desk. I was a not going to stress, I only have 30 mins to drive, that was until a certain section people decided that they weren't going to join the line they would go straight to the front! Did cause some aggravation with the majority who had and were waiting in the line for their turn. Probably the most amusing aspect was the American family that found themselves in the middle of a very multi lingual fracas for the few minutes it took to sort itself out. There facial expressions were a picture. I eventually got my car and after finding my way out of the dramatically revamped temporary parking structure with no exit signs, I hit the freeway. It's always a bit of challenge when your heads a bit zingy from lack of sleep/body clock time differences to jump into a manual gear car on the wrong side and function at 120kph. I found its the mirror that's always in the wrong place for a day or two, you just get so used to looking up and left to see the rear view but all you see is sun visor! Just as well I'm used to using side mirrors frequently! My welcome at the hotel was as effusive as ever, hugs all round. Which is nice I'm spending a month here and its so much better than being an anonymous face. So I'm now ensconced in 'my' room, the one that I always have since it's the room that offers up the best features. There is a race tomorrow or I can wait until the weekend, right at the moment I think the weekend is the best option, I always like to have a couple of days to recover rom the journey, check out my bike and get back into it. The days when I could just get straight into a race are long gone!