After spending a couple days in Paris, where we ate and drank and walked way too much, we headed to Brussels for a day. Guess what we did there? Ate, drank, and walked way too much.
To be honest, I was a little skeptical about Brussels at first. The walk from the train station to our hotel did not make a great first impression (it was one of those “don’t make eye contact and just keep moving” kind of affairs) and after being dazzled by the beauty of Paris it just looked drab in comparison. Things started looking up when we got to our hotel – it was old but super swanky and cool.
The view from the balcony – Brussels is an interesting mixture of old vs new
Then when we left the hotel and walked a couple blocks away into La Grand-Place, I suddenly understood. WOW.
sometimes I panoramic
La Grand-Place is the city’s central square. It contains their Town Hall and some other official buildings, but also many taverns and touristy shops. I’ve never seen so much amazing chocolate in my entire life. First we hit a tavern for some beers (bonus points if you guess which one is mine) and a super delicious cheese tray. Because cheese.
A slightly different view than your typical American bar
Then we wandered around past some more shops and I learned that apparently Easter is a really big thing there. All the chocolate places had crazy elaborate displays in the windows, most of which involved bunnies of varying levels of creepiness.
it’s ALL chocolate!
Then we wandered down to an alley full of nice restaurants to find some mussels (apparently you must have mussels in Brussels, but I personally refused to partake because ew). I kept calling it Diagon Alley but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it. We got serenaded by some interesting dudes and were lured into a restaurant with the promise of free drinks. When you’ve already had a few beers, free drinks just seem silly to turn down. Plus – I was on vacation.
Not-Diagon-Alley
We ate and drank some more, then started wandering back towards our hotel. Along the way we passed a waffle shop with some awesome looking waffles in the window, so I leaned in for a closer look. Sadly, in my slightly hazy beer and wine induced state I mis-judged just how far away the window was and WHAM – forehead went boom into the glass. Commence my former friends dying of laughter, everyone in the shop dying of laughter (it was a loud thunk), and me slinking away in shame. No waffle for me, just a minor concussion and long lasting mortification. Sorry about the forehead print on your window, waffle shop.
To make up for my lack of waffle, when we got back to the hotel we decided to see just how many macarons we could fit in our mouths. Those buggers are bigger than they look, I must say.
The trick is to smoosh them together…
Yep, that happened. Almost choked, but there are worse ways to die than via macaron eating contest. And yes there’s macaron in my hair. That’s how I party.
The next morning we snagged some breakfast from the buffet, where I fell in love with this brioche. Good god it was delicious. Pretty sure that’s crack sprinkled on top.
Then our Belgian friend Baudouin came to pick us up and take us to see some PONIES!!! But you have to wait til tomorrow for that… brace yourselves for pictures. Many many pictures.
After we landed in Brussels we took a train to Paris, checked into our hotel, and immediately set off sightseeing (sleep is overrated).
The view from my hotel room balcony
We didn’t get into Paris until around 2:30, so we mainly just walked around and got a feel for things, enjoying the city and making our plans for the next day. We ate (croque monsieur that I’m pretty sure had at least 2lbs of delicious cheese on it), we drank, we lost our way a couple times, and we got rained on, but it was still pretty amazing. Nothing exists in Paris that isn’t beautiful.
Notre Dame
view from one of the bridges
Sunset at the Louvre, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.
By the time we got back in the general area of our hotel we almost passed out on our feet in the market (30ish hours with no sleep maybe?) so we wisely decided to pack it in. I don’t think I’ve ever slept as well in my life as I did that first night. Exhaustion is awesome. On Day 2, which was our only full day in Paris, we had a definitive plan. We got up, had breakfast (the french breakfast is pretty much tailor made for me – a croissant, orange juice, and hot chocolate), and set off to the Eiffel Tower. Turns out that SOB is a lot farther away than it looks, it took us forever to get there. Almost 4 miles to be exact. Hindsight – take the metro. But then we would have missed out on seeing all the cool stuff along the way so I guess it was worth it.
Then we walked a little ways further past the Eiffel Tower to a tack shop called Padd. It was pretty neat to see this big store full of horse stuff in the middle of Paris right across from the military school. I’m not sure if it’s sad or a blessing in disguise that I only bought one thing… could also be a testament to the fact that I have too much crap already. But either way, it was pretty fun to paw through all their stuff and see what they had. Lots of color, a good dose of sparkle, Samshields and Delrange galore.
your eyes do not deceive you, those are camo breeches
Build your own breastplate – you could pick whatever elastic color you wanted and it snapped onto the girth strap. Pretty cool.
Oh ya know, just a 4,000Euro Bruno Delgrange hanging out on the rack with the Wintecs…
After escaping the tack shop with minimal damage we walked back toward the Louvre area, had some lunch, then hoofed it over to the Catacombs. For a history nerd like me this was pretty awesome, even if the experience was made slightly less enjoyable by the intense pain in my feet and calves from having walked so far already. Getting to see “old Paris” sitting right there under current day Paris… mind-blowing.
By this point we’d been out walking for 8 hours and all of us were dead on our feet, so we started the long trek back to the hotel, stopping of course for some sustenance along the way. And by sustenance I mean macarons. Then boeuf bourguignon.
By the end of the day I think we walked at least 10 miles total, and god did it ever feel like it. We were wrecked by the time we finally fell into bed. It was tough getting up the next morning, all of my muscles were protesting, but we managed to pull ourselves together and crawl on the train to head back to Brussels for one day of sightseeing there before the pony time began!
We leave today for Europe, which meant that my weekend was nuts. Unfortunately the package I ordered from Amazon with 2-day shipping that was supposed to arrive on Wednesday didn’t make it because of weather delays. Even though it was ON THE TRUCK for delivery on Friday. And even though I PASSED THE TRUCK two blocks from my house on the way home. Getting an email a couple hours later saying that it couldn’t be delivered due to “emergency weather conditions” was pretty irritating, especially considering it was 34 degrees and barely misting rain. There was zero impact on travel. Getting an email a few minutes later saying delivery rescheduled to Monday afternoon was even more irritating. Cue some very unhappy and fruitless phone calls after which I still had none of my stuff, so I got to spend all day Saturday driving around town buying everything I needed at the last minute and spending 3x as much money in the process. Ask me how much I love UPS right now.
I was almost as sad as Delia was when she was taking a nap and Stewie laid down on top of her
But I did have time on Friday night to swing by the blogger meet-up, which was fun (and yay – swag). It’s nice to put faces with blogs and names and horses. Sadly that was the only time I was able to meet up with the group the entire time, because see title. Thanks everyone for putting it together, and sorry I couldn’t participate more. Next time! Also I took no pictures of the actual meet-up, because I fail at meet-ups. But I did take this picture of my contribution to said meet-up: a giant vat of queso and some blackberry pear cider. Pretty sure I hit all the major food groups.
After I spent most of Saturday shopping, Brandy and my SO and I went to an indoor cycling charity event and sweated our butts off for an hour to benefit a dog rescue. These are the kinds of things you end up doing on a Saturday evening when you make the mistake of befriending your favorite spin instructor. The venue was a new fancy place that has new fancy bikes that “turn” and lean and show you your RPM’s and your distance and all that kind of stuff. Wizardry and Magic and all that jazz. Really it just means that they’re harder to ride and make your entire body work to stabilize it, thus making your abs hurt the next day.
After our sweaty spin session we naturally had to replace the calories we burned by stuffing our faces with food and drink, then I went home and immediately fell dead asleep. Seriously I don’t even think it was 10pm yet. Sunday was laundry and errands and packing and running by the barn to say bye to this handsome face:
He watched me walk away and it just about broke my heart. I can’t help but wonder if he was watching me leave because he didn’t want me to go, or if he was watching me leave to make sure I was actually gone before he started celebrating his vacation. Whatever. I’ll opt to believe the first one.
And of course now I’m very slowly getting ready to head to the airport. See you in 16ish hours, Brussels! If I’m able to log on and at least post a few pictures I will, otherwise sorry in advance for the silence. I’ll make up for it with lots of pony pictures when I get back. If the weather hasn’t improved by the time I return I’m moving somewhere horrible but warm, like Florida or California.
First – thanks to Sprinkler Bandit for asking me to be in her awesome Ammy Hour series! Such a cool idea. If you’re feeling particularly masochistic today, you can go read all about me here.
Otherwise it’s been kind of a boring week for me. I had a jumping lesson on Wednesday night in lovely 60 degree weather that went pretty well, and then tried to do a dressage ride yesterday. It was really cold (38) and I was thinking that if all these other bloggers can talk about riding in 15 and 20 degree weather, surely I could suck it up and handle the upper 30’s. It was also really windy and honestly, it was misery. Henry felt awful, I felt awful, and the whole experience in general was awful. How do you northerners do this? I do not get it. I’m opting out today and bowing down to all those who are obviously tougher than I.
Otherwise I’m just getting all my stuff ready to leave for Europe on Monday. So excited! I think and hope I’ve gotten everything that I need, all I have left to do is pack. It’s actually warmer there today than it is here…
WHHHHYYYY????
And yes, I might have already had the tack shop in Paris put something on hold for me to pick up while I’m there. International tack ho.
In my ramblings the other day about entering horse shows, the cost difference between h/j and eventing came up. I am always kind of floored by how affordable eventing is, having come from jumperland. ***Before I even get started I’m going to insert the disclaimer of “I know it varies for everyone, depending on your personal circumstances” so instead of telling me I’m wrong (because for mine I’m not) tell me how it’s different for you.***
For me personally there’s a huge difference between the cost of a USEF recognized horse trial and an A rated h/j show, but when I say that to eventers they tend to look at me as if I’ve grown a second head. Don’t get me wrong, neither sport is cheap. Nothing about horses in general is ever cheap. But as far as competing goes, in my circumstances, eventing wins the best value award.
Part of it is that eventing is a little more of a no-fuss, no-frills, independent type of sport. They don’t tend to set up elaborate mini-villages with drapes and tables and foliage at shows, they don’t tend to have grooms that you’re paying per day, and they definitely tend to not have a trainer with them every step of the way during a competition. In eventing your trainer cannot help you once you’re in the ring, and there are rules about warm-up and “outside assistance” that foster a you’re-on-your-own feeling at shows. In fact, a lot of them roll their trusty rusty Stanley plastic trunks into their stall spaces, set up their tack hooks on the outside (tack stalls and grooming stalls, pffft), and warm themselves up. It’s pretty darn rare to hear the words “I have to wait for my trainer” come out of an eventer. I’m not saying that makes them better (because god knows some of them could definitely use a trainer), it’s really just an entirely different mindset. They also seem a lot more likely to camp out – I have never in my life heard of anyone legit camping at a h/j show, but no one would bat an eye at a tent at an event. Note: I am not one of those people, I like having a shower and WiFi. They’re also more likely to haul themselves places (therefore making it easier to be so DIY when you’re not trainer-dependent for transportation) which in turn makes it easier for a sad non-trailer-owning person like me to split gas and bum a pretty cheap ride instead of paying a trainer up to $1/mile. So I pulled out some old show bills from my h/j days, one from an A show and one from a local level show, plugged those costs in, then put my eventing costs for similar level competitions next to them, for the sake of comparison.
First lets look at schooling shows, or non-USEF recognized shows:
And then a recognized event and rated h/j show:
A few explanations of my numbers: for the hotel cost I used a flat rate across the board of $50 per night. Obviously if the show is longer it requires more nights in a hotel. Usually I try to share a room with someone so that’s a fairly accurate guess, and in an effort to make it fair I stuck to a standard $50/night rate for all shows. There aren’t a lot of shows close enough to Austin to make it just a day trip, so hotel is almost always a factor. Trailering fees look different because when I was showing h/j I never had the option of tagging along with someone who had their own trailer, therefore I had to pay whatever the trainer charged. Almost all of my eventing friends have their own rigs so it’s a definite cost saver. Also at h/j shows paying a per diem trainer fee wasn’t really negotiable, that’s just how it was done. At events I can pick and choose which days I want trainer assistance (if any). For the sake of fair comparison I kept the trainer fee in the events, even if I wouldn’t necessarily be paying it. All other fees are show fees and therefore concrete, although obviously some events/shows are cheaper or more expensive than others. The ones I chose here for the recognized/rated columns are both what I would call toward the upper end of average, cost wise, for this area.
A shows are pretty…
… pretty freakin EXPENSIVE
I also didn’t include food costs since that varies, or gas if I drove myself, but I did include a line to mention whether or not some meals/free food are provided by the show to competitors. To me that’s a money saving perk. Feed me.
The potential to win back money exists at some shows too, and is worth considering. Granted I have never won back enough money at any show to really make much of a dent, so to me it’s not much of a draw, but to others it is. What I do think is pretty interesting, and worth noting when looking at comparisons like this, is that events are largely run by volunteers. IMO that helps keep the costs down. On one hand it seems like it would require more manpower in the way of XC jump judges, bit check, etc. But when you consider that most h/j shows are running several rings at a time (and all that that entails) I would bet that the number of people needed comes pretty close to equaling out.
Eventing, take my money. Just not as much of it.
new USEA slogan? “It’s 2.5x less expensive for this random chick in TX!”
As you can see, for me, the savings is pretty substantial. I can do 5 recognized horse trials for what it would cost me to do 2 A rated h/j shows. The same ratio applies on the schooling side – I could do 5 unrecognized events for what it would cost me to do 2 schooling h/j shows. My reality? It’s 2.5x more expensive to show my horse as a jumper than as an eventer.
Honestly it seems like no matter what the cost is, everyone will always think it’s too much. That’s human nature I guess. Even in triathlon, where entry fees are generally from $70-120ish per race, they constantly lament about how expensive it is while I just laugh to myself. At least at the end of a triathlon you almost always get a medal and cookies… I can’t even imagine how delighted I would be if someone gave me a medal and cookies every time I came out of the ring at a show.
or cookie medals…
I would be interested in hearing what the costs of h/j vs eventing and rated/recognized vs schooling are like for other people! I’m jealous of those who are are only a short drive away from your show venues and don’t have to pay stall/hotel all the time… makes me miss Maryland.
breedrideevent.com 