On our last breakfast I decided to make my own waffle, a thin
one, and shave chocolate all over it. It was okay.

The airport bus from the train station is reasonably fast and
reasonably priced - for E10 we got there in 40 minutes without
having to pay the appropriately-named Diabolo tax, which the
airport authority imposes on every train ticket to or from
Zavantem, to pay for rail improvements(?).

Getting our boarding passes via the machine was easy but slow,
as were security and emigration, and we had just an hour to
enjoy the Brussels lounge, which offered 5 beers on self-serve
tap, Stella, Hoegaarden, Leffe blonde, something nasty, and the
intriguingly named Blond blonde (or Blonde blonde, I forget).
Also vino rojo ordinario and a couple kinds of uninspired whites.
The standard basic Star-Alliance-wide liquors - Bacardi, generic
gin and vodka, Johnny Red, some kind of Bourbon. No Cognac today.
Blond blond tasted sort of Belgian-fruity but was not horrid. I
switched to red wine.

They cleared away the breakfast stuff at 10:30 and put out friets
and ratatouille on a vegan table and carbonnades with a mixture
of rice and corn, which Bonnie brought me a sampler of. What she
came up with was almost all gristle in a very tasty gravy, so I
went back for seconds - unfortunately, the kitchen had realized
its "mistake" and put out a tray of normal stuff, which was okay.

A ten minute walk to the gate. We presented our passports to a
functionary who was unfazed by our lack of security stickers and
gave some to us and invited us to stand aside for preboarding.

We preboarded, people looking at us as if we were cutting the
line or perhaps as if they thought we were famous.

UA 951 BRU IAD 1200 1420 772 3DG

It was this flight on which Bonnie managed to plug her
headset into the 110V outlet. The flight attendant had
clearly seen this before and approached the problem gingerly
but with aplomb. Nobody was much shocked by this occurrence.

The aircraft have been retooled to match the 787s, so our
accommodations were identical to last time, a 1-2-1 configuration
with an adjustable privacy divider between our seats. This was
much more room than we needed (in the waywayback, they cram them
in 10 abreast).

Good flight attendants.

I asked for a glass of Riesling as aperitif - it was sort of
off-water in both color and flavor. Quenching enough, but
Schloss Johannisberg it wasn't.

Bonnie had a French Bordeaux, which might have been okay
but for the fact it was corked, I corrected my course and
dodged the reef and went with the Wente Cabernet, reliably
mediocre.

The appetizer was buffalo mozzrella, tomato, kalamata olive,
basil, balsamic glaze. It was surprisingly good, all the
ingredients fresh and recently cut.

A salad of mixed greens, fennel, orange served with dressing
and assorted breads was as described, except that the whitish
stuff shaved over was a bit hard and tasteless for fennel -
maybe it was coconut chips? wood chips? who knows.

I got a pretzel roll, a genre I like and find United's version
relatively fine.

My main course was beef short rib, honey and spice sauce, jasmine
rice, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, and carrots; also listed on the
menu was broccoli, which did not make an appearance. The dish was
surprisingly good, the meat having a little band of moistening
gristle; very little visible fat, sadly. The sauce was sort of
Thai-style and surprisingly spicy with Sriracha. The rice was
a bit mushy but okay, as were the vegetables. There was plenty
of food.

I opted out of dessert again and had a glass of rather bland Port
instead. It turned out that they had loaded macarons so I relented
and had a serving, which was a rationed-out two little ones, coffee
and chocolate, both pretty good, so I asked for more, but there
weren't any left.

Before landing they served a snack. I chose chicken ragout with
gnocchi, the components in a medium-brown gravy, indistinguishable
by sight. The chicken, white meat, had been tenderized; it didn't
taste or feel bad; the gnocchi tasted quite good but were mushy.
Large chunks of rehydrated dehydrated regular mushrooms and
oyster mushrooms, pretty tasty if a little odd in texture. Another
pretzel roll came preselected for me. I had a glass of Chardonnay.
which turned out to be as bland as if not identical to the Riesling.
I called for a bubbly replacement but they had run out of Champagne
halfway through the flight, so as a consolation, they gave me two
little candies, a milk raspberry truffle (okay, a little artificial-
tasting) and a dark chocolate nothing truffle (better). These were
not Belgian and had no statement of origin, Often United uses Lily
O'Brien, and I suspect this may be the source.

We landed over half an hour late, and it took me longer than
usual to get through customs (the contraband dog pointed at me,
which sort of made me laugh).

it turned out they really wanted to look at Bonnie's handbag,
which recently had contained half a banana.

Still, we had time for a half hour unwind at the club, as our
connecting gate was changed from the very far off D16 to the
comfortably attainable C17.

UA 822 IAD BOS 1705 1848 738 2EF

The snack on this flight was Albanesi gummy bears. I saved
them for a rainy day.
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