I’m in the World Club at the Minneapolis Airport waiting for my next flight. Of course, waiting means getting on the computer and connecting to the internet. The flight from Idaho Falls was on a small regional jet seating 48 people and every seat was taken. There is one flight from Idaho Falls to Minneapolis in the morning leaving from Idaho Falls at 8:15 a.m. There is one flight each day from Minneapolis to Idaho Falls which leaves about 9:30 p.m. The two flights line up reasonably well with a trip to Europe, so here I am. The airport terminal in Minneapolis is huge but also a very nice place. There are lots of places to eat and a number of nice shops. The Northwest World Club is also a good convenience. There is (pay for) wireless in the club making being on the net a reasonable experience.

Before I left Idaho Falls, I sent a post to the blog by way of e-mail. I would have expected that entry would already be on the weblog, but no such luck! If it doesn’t appear before I leave here, there’s not much I can do until Monday. The hotel I’m where I’m staying in Kortrijk, Belgium, has dial-up access, but no high-speed wireless. There doesn’t seem to be very much high-speed available in hotels in Belgium yet, which I don’t understand. It seems like every hotel and motel in the US has high-speed and most of them offer it as a free service for their guests. This capability is common even in Asia. What’s up with Europe??

I’m staying in Kortrijk this time rather than in Gent. There is some kind of huge festival in Gent and the city center is shut down for the week. Since the hotels are in the city center, this becomes quite inconvenient for the business traveller. Kortrijk is about as far southwest of Oudenaarde as Gent is northeast. It’s not a huge city, but much larger than Oudenaarde. Even at that, finding a hotel was not easy. Late July and the whole month of August is vacation time in Belgium. It turns out that many hotels close down during this period for a couple of weeks so that the hotel owners and staff can take a vacation. Since everyone else is supposed to be on vacation, this isn’t considered to be an inconvenience. I’ve often wondered where people who go on vacation stay if all the hotels close during the same period?? It’s a mystery to me.