France Pics

I am not going to be able to finish the next text installment of our trip to Europe for at least the next two weeks. So, I'm posting the remaining pictures with hopes that you'll actually come back and read my story when I get time to post it.


I know you all will because you're awesome readers!


Enjoy pictures of our week in France.

Belgium – Brussels and Brugge

We arrived at the train station in Brussels at about 2pm, stored our luggage (there are storage lockers in every train station – so handy when you’re traveling between hotels), and went on a mission to find lunch. We had read that the things to eat in Belgium were mussels, french fries, chocolate, and beer. We knocked out three of the four in one stop for lunch. We each got a big pot of mussels, an order of fries and a beer. The food was amazing!! Chris wasn’t a huge fan of the mussels; I thought it was all fantastic. After lunch, we walked to the Grand Place – the medieval central square of Brussels. The square is surrounded by a palace and what are now government buildings all decked out in gold! We checked the last of the four Belgian must-eats off our list here, with some chocolates from one of the many chocolate shops around the square.

From the square, we took a leisurely stroll through one of the more historic areas of town. We saw a few old churches, the old (and current) Hall of Justice, and the remains of an old convent partially buried under one of the streets. We stopped for the best food of the day – a Belgian waffle with strawberries and chocolate sauce. Why this wasn’t on the must-east list, I’ll never know. We ended our wandering at the city’s famous Maaneken-Pis statue. Chris was most excited to see this statue of a little boy peeing (boys – so weird). He was a completely disappointed when the statue was life size… as in about 2.5 feet tall!

The only thing left on our list for Brussels was the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, so we walked the few blocks to what we thought was the museum entrance, and then we walked a few more to what was actually the museum entrance. By the time we got there, they were closing. Good job us! We were allowed to walk around the entry way which had a handful of paintings and a really gross 10 foot high globe covered in beetles. Yuck. Since we now had a few hours to kill thanks to the early museum closing time, we found ourselves a nice little Belgian bar and revisited must-eat item number four… beer.

Eventually, we said a less-than-heartfelt goodbye to Brussels and boarded the train for Brugge. I booked our B&B in Brugge specifically because, in a town of medieval stone buildings, this one had been renovated in a very modern glass and windows style by its architectural engineer owner. It did not disappoint. The front door was huge – like half of a single car garage door huge - and the dining area where we had breakfast in the mornings had an entire wall of sliding doors that could be rolled back to open the room to the courtyard outside. It was pretty cool. After a quick look around, we found the nearest restaurant for some much needed dinner. We ended up at a place called Tom’s Dinner where we enjoyed way too much delicious pasta!

The next morning, we left our B&B and headed to the town square for a 366 stair climb to the top of the town’s bell tower. 366 is a lot of stairs, but the view from the top was pretty amazing. The best part was that the towers bells played their hourly concert while we were at the top. It was interesting (and loud) to watch the hundreds of hammers beat out a song on all the bells. After trudging down all the stairs again (down is much better than up), we made our way to the Half Moon Brewery for a tour. We tried to rent bikes on our way, but after our first attempt was unsuccessful, we decided to wait until later.

The brewery tour was interesting because most of the original equipment was still on display. The coolest thing we saw was a 20’X20’ copper pan used for drying various ingredients – that’s a lot of copper! We enjoyed our free samples with a lunch of leek casserole, soup and chocolate mousse. Chris was not a fan of the leek casserole. It was covered in cream and butter – how can that be bad?

Our afternoon in Brugge was spent walking through the beautiful old town from one art museum and church to another. We started in the Groening Museum admiring the work of many notable Flemish painters, then enjoyed a quick stop at the Church of our Lady to see Michelangelo’s statue Madonna and Child. Next, we walked through the Memling Museum. This museum is housed in the city’s first hospital and is home to many beautiful Flemish paintings as well as medieval torture medical devices. I think I would have preferred death over treatment with some of those tools. Stay away from my brain please. We wrapped up the afternoon with another, successful, attempt at renting bikes!

Our bike trip to the neighboring city of Damme came to a screeching halt as soon as we arrived at the canal surrounding the city of Brugge. A boat was trying to pass through the canal, so we had to wait about 15 minutes for the boat to pass and the draw bridge over the canal to come back down. Once we were on our way, we passed through 10 miles of beautiful countryside on a path next to a canal connecting the two towns. We stopped in Damme to take a few pictures by the town’s windmill, rode through the six streets that make up the town, and headed back to Brugge via a path on the other side of the canal. Before returning our bikes, we followed the canal around part of Brugge to see the three windmills located on the outskirts of the town. We spent three days in the Netherlands and only saw one windmill, but managed to see four in one day once we got to Belgium – go figure.

For dinner, we decided to try our hand one more time at traditional Belgian cooking, and it was somewhat successful once we finally found the restaurant our guide book had recommended (be thankful the US adopted a gridded street layout in most of its town). The butter and cream drenched fish was pretty good, but I don’t think either of us is anxious to make Belgian cooking a part of our normal menu. Well, maybe the waffles.

The next morning was the earliest wake-up on our trip. We caught a 6:25am high-speed train that took us from Brugge to Paris in only 2.5 hours. The train topped out at a mere 187 mph (don’t worry, we’ll go faster later). I had booked these tickets online before we left home and was able to get us first class seats for really cheap. We enjoyed the life of luxury with breakfast (including chocolate croissants), lots of leg room and great chairs. I told Chris not to get used to it, but I will book first class whenever the price allows from here on out!

Netherlands - Amsterdam

Netherlands – Amsterdam and the Keukenhof Gardens

In the last post about Germany, I described our epic train ride from Koln to Amsterdam… let’s start this post off with: we made it to Amsterdam shortly after dark. We walked outside the train station, and into a construction zone (they are installing a new subway line). From what we’d read, the tram was the quickest and easiest way to get around in the city. Thankfully for us, three different lines stopped just a few blocks from our hotel. Within 15 minutes of arriving in the city, we were in front of our hotel.

Bring on the next problem – we were staying at a bed and breakfast, and no one was home!! Thankfully, it didn’t take long to get our hosts on the phone. They had run next door to talk to their neighbors and lost track of time. We settled into our beautiful room on the 3rd floor of a house, built in the late 1600’s, right on the one of the canals. Our room overlooked the central courtyard shared by all the houses on the block. Since we hadn’t had a chance to eat during our train trip, we asked our hosts for a recommendation. They sent us to the local pub, where we proceeded to drink our dinner in the form of some yummy Belgian beer!

The next morning cemented our newly-discovered love of bed and breakfasts. We had breakfast on the second floor of the house, in a beautiful dining room with 20’ ceilings and huge windows overlooking the canal. We had soft boiled eggs served in cute little egg holders (neither of us had ever tried a soft boiled egg before, so it was a bit of an experience) and bread with chocolate sprinkles to put on the buttered slices.

After our delicious breakfast, we started our day’s touring adventure at the Rijksmuseum. This is a huge art museum filled with an impressive collection of Dutch artwork. Most of the huge building was under renovation, so we got the condensed version of the museum. All the best works of art crammed into about 12 rooms. It was perfect for Chris and me. No extra walking and no trying to figure out which paintings we’re supposed to be looking for amongst the thousands on the walls (that will come in our tour of the Louvre later in the trip). As with most art museums, no pictures for you!

Having had enough culture for one day (we have a one art museum per day limit), we headed over to the Heineken brewery for the “Heineken Experience”. We toured the brewery and experienced being made into beer in their 3-D theatre. The sampling at the end of the tour was our favorite part! The tables in the sampling area were touch-sensitive, but only to the beer glasses, not your hands.

What better way to follow up a brewery tour than with a trip to the world famous Keukenhof flower gardens. These gardens, open only for a few weeks in the spring, are home to thousands upon thousands of tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, and many others. We spent a chilly but partly sunny afternoon walking through the entire garden (thanks Brass family for this awesome recommendation). We took TONS of pictures, and then we took some more because everything was so pretty. This was by far our biggest picture day of the trip, topping out over 700!

We closed down the park, then took the train back into Amsterdam. We had asked our hosts about what foods were “must eats” in Amsterdam, and they told us we had to have toasties, pancakes, croquettes, and beer. Chris latched onto the pancakes idea, so we went in search of a pancake house for dinner. We found one… sort of. We ordered toasties and pancakes. Let’s just say we were a little disappointed. Pancakes turned out to be crepes with a slice of meat and cheese and toasties were toasted Wonder Bread with sliced tomatoes and cheese. Yummy! We followed up this dinner disappointment with a big order of cheese french fries from a fry stand (apparently fries are big deal in this part of Europe – they were sold everywhere).

Our second morning in Amsterdam started with an interesting and extremely depressing tour of the Anne Frank house. Only in a city constructed like Amsterdam could that many people hide in such a (relatively) large space for so long. This was by far the most tourist-filled place we’d been yet. We pretty much just followed the flow of people, single file, through the house and back out through the gift shop – always through the gift shop. We had lunch across the street from the museum, at a little café along the canal. Chris decided to try croquettes, the last of our recommended foods. They were okay. Kind of like mozzarella sticks, but with gravy instead of cheese.

After lunch, we followed a long and winding path through the Jordaan neighborhood. This neighborhood was supposed to be one of the most picturesque neighborhoods in the city, and it was. We enjoyed walking through the peaceful residential streets and past a few scattered sidewalk cafes. From the Jordaan neighborhood, we eventually made our way to the City Library. The library has one of the best panoramic views of the city, and as a bonus, the inside of the library is seriously cool! We took the required pictures and enjoyed a little dessert at the rooftop cafeteria before setting out for a walk through the famous Red Light District.

The Red Light District did not live up the hype at all. The neighborhood looked almost exactly like the rest of the places we had been walking though with the exception of more police, more tourists and red lights over nearly every door. We expected to see scantily clad women at every turn, but that was true of only a couple of little alleyways. Nothing was nearly as scandalous as we thought it would be (thankfully, I think!). We didn’t take any pictures of this area – we were warned that it was possible to have our memory confiscated should we happen to take a picture of the wrong thing. We decided not to risk it!

We wrapped up our last night Amsterdam with a performance of the Boom Chicago improv comedy group. This came highly recommended from a family friend, and it was the perfect way to finish our time in Amsterdam. Boom Chicago is a group of British comedians that started doing performances in Amsterdam many years ago and never left. The show we saw was all about Social Media – Facebook, eBay, Twitter, you name it. We laughed for two hours straight!

The next morning, we got up late, had a final delicious breakfast, and boarded the train for Brussels!