I’ve been rolling down the shades and keeping the curtains open to allow the morning light to wake me. This morning, that happened at 7:30, a full hour before my alarm.

I will mention once and not again that today is the first Mother’s Day since I went No Contact with my mother last June, and my sadness about this cast a mild pall over my day.

Breakfast is at 8:30, so I grabbed my laptop and deleted loads of work emails. I had some vacation-itis my last week of work, so I kind of owed the time and it would make reintegration and catch-up upon my return a lot easier.

In addition to the daily bread rolls and cheeses, breakfast this morning was a strawberry crumble and Erika had also made raspberry-almond muffins. Much sweeter fare than I’m used to but made with so much love! Dietrich and Erika chatted with myself and other guests at the table, and I’m finding them to be the most wonderful, warm, amiable, kind people.

I laid back down and cleared out more work emails, logged all the geocaching trackables from Luxembourg, and deleted photos.

I washed up in the tub and got dressed, heading out with my laptop around 13:30.

With my plan to drink Westy 12 at Cambrinus, I wanted to avoid a repeat of Friday night, being turned away without a reservation. I walked there first and made one for 19:00. They initially said I could either do 18:00 or 20:30, and I chose the latter, until I said it was just me and in that case 19:00 was available. I would be in a front window table.

I walked on to De Republiek, a place Erika recommended when I asked where I could sit with my laptop for a couple hours.

I was in the mood for a salad and ordered the only one on the menu, their version of a Caesar. I asked if it would be possible to substitute another protein for the chicken, and the server said not really but he would ask the kitchen. He came back and offered fish sticks. OK, sure 🤷‍♀️

I connected successfully to their wifi network using the password on the menu, but then found that nothing would load, as if I weren’t actually connected. This was a big speed bump in my plan for the afternoon.

I put away my laptop and focused on the salad when it arrived. It didn’t much resemble a Caesar. It had green leaf lettuce rather than romaine, a piece of asparagus, no garlic or croutons, a poached egg, and some kind of guacamole. And the fish sticks.

I gave it a go, but once I broke the poached egg, it became rather soggy and nearly inedible. While waiting for the server to bring the check, I used my phone to start choosing photos for an Instagram post of my time in Gent and wanted to research some of the landmark names for the caption, which required data, which was slow.

The check never came. Between the broken wifi, terrible salad, minimal service, and crying newborn sitting behind me, I needed to GTFO of De Republiek.

I gathered up my stuff and approached the entrance, where three of the staff looked at me expectantly, not at all anticipating my desire to pay.

While he was processing my card, I asked the host who’d seated me where I might find wifi, and he recommended I Love Coffee, 50 meters away. I had to use Google Maps because I have no idea how far that is, and it was farther down the street than it sounded.

I ordered a coconut matcha latte and spent 2.5 hours on my laptop, mostly journaling. I posted to IG, wrote a summary post of Luxembourg, and finished the post of my travel day to Brugge.

I dropped my laptop at the listing, arrived at Cambrinus just before 19:00, and was seated in the window as planned. I perused the giant bound tome of a menu, only three laminated pages of which were the food menu (repeated in various languages), with the rest being beers.

The pages were color-coded by beer type, and I found Trappist beers on orange sheets toward the back of the book. On the last page, alphabetical by brewery, were the three Westvleteren beers.

I ordered the 12, and it came in an unlabeled and already opened bottle with a glass. Any Westvleteren beer with a label is a bootleg. The legally obligatory information is printed on the cap, a golden yellow one in the 12’s case (which I kept, of course).

My first sip, or second or third, didn’t blow me away. It just tasted like a dark beer, not particularly complex. That changed, though. It opened up in the glass and I found it malty and rich, with a subtle cherry note. That wasn’t all that changed. Its 10.2% ABV progressively hammered me over the course of my dinner, the fish stew.

I arrived home at 20:30, and it was a while before I could return to writing. Once sober, I finished my Gent post.

I’m not a basketball fan, or a fan of any sports, but I’ve been loosely following the NBA playoffs.

I watched the Warriors (my always and forever home) with my dad when I visited him last month, and it’s been easy to get caught up in Blazers (my adopted home) fever since Damian Lillard’s nearly half-court three-point buzzer-beater to advance them beyond the first round a few weeks ago.

I don’t watch the games, but I sometimes keep live Google updates open while they’re being played. As I finished up for the night, the Blazers advanced to the Western Conference finals against… the Warriors.

I have weird feels. I don’t care, but I kind of do? I don’t know which to root for, if either?

I texted my dad about this and went to sleep just after 1:00.