Nemo 33

I finally made it there – 20 minutes from the birds pad in downtown Brussels.  Ok, so the thought of diving in a pool may not fill you with excitement but this is a custom built jobbie with underwater caves, air locks so that while you are at 10 metres down you can surface inside the cave and take your gear off and have a chat, then there is a part they call ‘the pit’.  The entrance of the pit is in 10 meters of water but then it drops a further 23 metres straight down until you are 33 metres under water.  My dive buddy was not a deep diver so I left him sitting on the edge of the pit while I went down to have  look.  Also a recent addition is a ‘Smart Car’. In around 5 metres of water, completely stripped out so that you can swim through it – although I am curious as to why it had a brand new set of tyres on it and even more curious as to how they got it up there and into the pool.

Now the best bit – water temp of around 28ºC so shorts were the order of the day.  We did take a couple of photos so if i get them emailed, they will appear here.

This afternoon I got to the pad at around 3pm, checked my mail and then started playing xbox live. After less than an hour of slaying Nazi Zombies i took my headphones off just in time to hear the ring of a text message arriving. Was there snow here was the message.  I opened the blinds and by crikey if there wasn’t two inches of fresh snow covering everything – excellent ! Now of course I don’t mind the snow but the missus is on her way back from Hamburg and is a little delayed.  Better still, the ring road around central Brussels is at a stand still too, so I may get an unexpected bonus time on the xbox!

We also had the green light from her boss for me to accompany her on her next business trip – TO LOS ANGELES !!!!!!!!!! So i get 2 weeks out there and only have to pay airfare and food, the return flight with Virgin was less than 500 squid so no problems there.  One curious thing I noticed, the BA flight and Virgin flight were exactly the same price – down to the penny. Weren’t they both accused of price fixing a couple of years ago ?

Anyway – I chose Virgin for 2 reasons. 1. Never flown with them before, and 2. the BA flight was on a 747, if you get an older one, no individual TV and videos – imagine that on an 11 hour flight!  (Lufthansa – hang your heads in shame, last time I transatlantic’d with you on a 747 it was old and worn)

A trip to the supermarket today meant that I could stock up on Chimay Blue which will surely make a few faces smile in England.  I am heading back on Thursday morning to tie up a couple of loose ends and then get on that Virgin flight back to 30º temperatures.

But for now, I think I am about done.