Amsterdam

Amsterdam - red light district and marijuana. Nope, Amsterdam is actually a very cool city with amazing canals (way better than Venice), cool architecture, and lots of history. The Anne Frank novel shaped my view of Amsterdam and that's the side of the city that I love. You do smell weed everywhere, but it's not really a big deal.

Skinniest house in Amsterdam - just a tad larger
than the width of the doorway

We did a free walking tour on our first morning which was really great. We learned all sorts of things, like how the houses lean slightly over the street/canal and have hooks at the top so merchants could pull all their wares up to the attic for storage safe from rats and accidental flooding. We also learned that if there was a problem with the dikes, everyone had to drop what they were doing and fix it. If you were angry with your neighbor and couldn't work with them, they would chop your head off, just like that.

Make your own Magnum ice cream bar - mine had rose petals! Sarah had
strawberry sugar on hers. Definitely the coolest toppings ever.

The Dutch aren't famous for their cuisine at all, and chances are, you don't even know what they eat; I had no idea either. From what I gather, most of the people live on Chinese takeout, but we did manage to find some authentic (ish) food. Sarah had this mashed potato, carrot, and onion thing with one giant meatball. It was really good. I had a Canadian moment and voted for a dutch bacon pancake with syrup and powdered sugar, which was so delicious. We tried some other dutch food as well. Its really hard to describe, but one was a dense donut consistency that was fried in oil and tasted like raisin bread, and other one looked like a hot dog shape, but was a beef mashed potato and gravy inside. Sarah thinks that one was like southern biscuits and gravy packaged in hot dog form.

Us on a cool bridge

After two months in Europe, we're a little museumed out, but we did hit up a purse and handbag museum, which was really cute. It told us the history of the handbag back from the middle ages, and had purses from then all the way up to today. They also had quite a collection of handbags owned by famous people which were all Chanel and D&G and stuff.

Cute house in Volendam

Of course we went to the Anne Frank museum. There is always a huge line to get in there, but it is worth the wait for sure. It gives you the same sort of feeling that the concentration camp did, but not quite as strong. It really puts things into perspective, and you realize that this was for real, and real people lived there in hiding. In North American we don't really have the opportunity to get up and personal with WW2 history, so it really hits you when you see real physical remnants, not just pictures and stories.

Random storefronts in Amsterdam

Chances are, you have seen the blue and white pottery Holland is famous for called Delftware. We found out there was a museum, so we decided to go check it out. When we got there, we were informed that it was not a museum at all, but in fact, it was an "experience". A little unsure of what to expect, we waited at the bottom of a staircase outside the building for the doors to open. They did open, and we walked into a little pottery-making studio (or so it seemed). Being the only ones there, we didn't really know what to do, so we sat down on some stools in the middle and waited. Soon enough, a video starts playing, and we were told that we had time traveled hundreds of years into the past. The video proceeded to explain the history of Delftware and the process of making it. Throughout the video, little doors kept opening all over the room with demonstrations and such. It was one of the oddest museums I've been to, and it was quite the "experience"... We were a little weirded out as we left, but we learned some things none the less, so mission accomplished, I guess!

Amsterdam has a surprising amount of green spaces, and we really enjoyed spending some time in Vondelpark, which is quite large, and I wish we could have spent more time there, as its a beautiful park!

Sarah and her clogs

One afternoon, we went on a tour to do some cultural stuff like cheese tasting, watching a wooden clog-making demonstration, and walking down a lane with lots of old historical windmills. I'm not a huge fan of cheese, but Europe really knows how to make good cheese. I still don't like a large amount of it, but I really enjoyed little bits here and there. Sarah was really nice and bought some to share with her family - I'm not sure if she made it all the way back to Paris without eating it herself though! The wooden clog shop was really cool. It was interesting to see how they make the shoes, and I like how people still wear them. Too bad we don't have traditional wear like that! Sarah, being the shoe fanatic she is, decided she couldn't go home without adding some clogs to her collection, so she bought a pair and I really hope she wears them at random times at home because that would be great! Windmills - a very Dutch thing! The old windmills are very beautiful! We were there on a breezy day, and one of them was working. They used to be used to pump water out of canals and stuff, but now they have electric pumps for safety, and the old windmills are used more for manufacturing, I believe.

Epic green bikes

The best part of our time in Amsterdam was definitely the time that we spent with the friends there. They are amazing! We met some of them at Hambuhren early on in our trip, and it was really nice to see them again. We went to this little town on the coast called Volendam that was so cute! It was a really nice day, and we walked around, watched the ridiculous number of sailboats on the water and ate ice cream. We also had the privilege of having lunch and supper with some friends, and that is where we tried some of the Dutch food I talked about. At sunset, we went to the beach near Amsterdam and watched the sun go down while having appetizers at a restaurant on the beach. This was one of my favorite times in Amsterdam!

Sunset on the beach

On my last day with Sarah, we decided to see Amsterdam as you are supposed to - via bikes. In Bruges, biking was really fun and it was a pretty simple way to get around. Biking in Amsterdam is a completely different story. Its definitely way more scary to bike there than it is to drive in Canada. When you're walking, you have to watch out to make sure you don't get run over by a bicycle, and when you're cycling, you have to make sure you don't hit any people or cars, or get hit by people or cars. Plus, you have to navigate the city, which is a bit difficult even on foot. Needless to say we made it through the afternoon without crashing, so that was a huge success. 

Sarah takes the train back to Paris by herself :(
The saddest part of our trip!! I miss her

Well, that concludes Europe 2013, sadly enough! Hopefully there will be another Eurotrip before too long!

Brugge

Postcard view of Brugge

Belgium is an amazing country that I feel is overlooked by many people. Brugge was one of my favorite places we've been. It's so quaint and peaceful - a great place for a chill holiday. The good thing is, there's lots to do, so you won't get bored if you are there a couple days.
There are five things that Brugge is known for: fries, waffles, lace, chocolate, and beer. In Brugge, just about every storefront has one of these things. I'm not entirely sure how all the chocolatiers stay in business there, because literally every 3rd store is a chocolate shop. It's pretty great, because its very easy to satisfy those chocolate cravings on the spot!

Sarah and I were quite serious about our Belgian chocolate, and as we each purchased roughly 6 pounds of the stuff, we decided to go on a very intense chocolate tasting of three of the most highly rated chocolatiers in Brugge. While this was an enlightening experiment, we actually ended up getting chocolate from all three chocolatiers simply because they were all quite different. I am still swooning over The Chocolate Line's caramel chocolates though...
Just to be touristy, we went to the fries museum. Here we learned basically everything we ever wanted to know about potatoes and how fries came to be. In Belgium, they deep fry them twice in two different oils, and they are more of a steak cut fry than the normal fast food fries you find here. They do taste much better than American fries, however, they are still fries and you still feel gross after consuming a large quantity of deep fried goodness!

I was really looking forward to trying Belgian waffles, because as you know, or should have figured out by now, I am completely obsessed with dessert. Frankly, I was blown away. They are not at all like the waffles we have here that we eat for breakfast. Belgian waffles are very sweet, especially when you add toppings like Nutella, whipped cream, etc. They are not a breakfast food (but seriously, I would eat them at any time because they are amazing), but they make the most delicious snack.

Brugge by night

The making of lace is something that I never really considered before. While we were in Brugge, we went to a place where these old ladies sit in a room that looks like it used to be a small classroom and make lace by hand. I was blown away. First of all, most of the ladies were easily over 80 years old. Secondly, they were sitting on wooden chairs, like you would find in a traditional dining room. Thirdly, they can move their hands faster than anyone I've ever seen, and the one old lady was making lace without looking at her hands or the pattern while talking to us in broken English and showing us some of her other work. If you have never seen lace being made, you probably should Youtube it or something. they have these bobbins of thread that they pretty much toss around, weaving an intricate pattern. They stick pins into the pattern to weave around, and that's how you get the larger holes in lace. It was really cool, and definitely worth the two or three euros to see.

As far as the beer, there is a brewery in town who makes a special beer that they do not sell to anyone, so if you want to try it, you have to go to that specific brewery. Its highly potent stuff at a whopping 12.5% and they will cut you off after three. I didn't try it, so I can't tell you what it tastes like, but you can go check it out if you'd like! Besides that specific beer, they make hundreds of other beers in Belgium, so there's lots for you to chose from.

The architecture is really beautiful in Brugge. It's a World Heritage Site, so all the buildings are very well preserved. If the building is in its original state as it was first built, the building will have a blue coat of arms sign by the door. If it has been modified in any way, somewhere on the facade will be a number with the last date of renovation. It's a gorgeous place to bike around (which we did for an evening - such a good time!) and enjoy the atmosphere. There is also a really nice biking path around the outside of the city. There are a couple nice parks as well - one is completely infested with swans, which sounds cool, but they destroyed the grass so you can't even go in really, and its pretty disgusting. Not to mention the fact that swans are really mean, and with the amount of tourists there, I bet there are a few swan attacks every year. The swan is the symbol of Brugge, and there is a long story behind that which you can look up if you really care that much.
Basically, you should probably move Belgium to the top of your European-countries-to-visit list, especially Brugge. You'll love it, I promise!

Brussels/Ghent/Antwerp

Sarah and her shoes...

 This is going to be a weird post because Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp are very very different places, but here goes.

The famous Manneken Pis in Brussels

Because we skipped out on the rest of our stay in Strasbourg, we decided to head over to Brussels to see what was up.

Ghent

Brussels was pretty sweet, better than what I expected. Of course it has all the government stuff so its very businessy, but it was a fairly attractive city for the most part. We walked around a bit and went to this palace ruins that are beneath a palace that's standing right now. After poking around for a bit we basically spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine in a very nice park.

The chocolate in Ghent is way better than the chocolate in Brussels...

Since it was our first full day in Belgium, naturally we went into a chocolate shop... and bought some absolutely amazing chocolate and proceeded to eat it right away. So amazing.

Brussels

Its a good thing we have almost a week in Belgium, because I am going to fully appreciate the access to good things like Belgian waffles, fries, chocolate, etc. For only having one day in Brussels, I'm pretty sure I like Belgium already!

Ghent

The next day we went to Ghent on our way to Bruges. Its a small medieval town that's really cute! Little Flemish towns are very quaint and distinctive. Its one of those styles you can pinpoint easily, and we like it so much! I feel like Europe is full of places like this that not many people know about or can't be bothered going to, and I want to find more of them. They are so fun to walk around in!

She's super pumped!

Sarah was really excited because there is a for real medieval castle here, and it was really cool. We made that our destination, but it took us a long time to get there because we walked down the main shopping street and July sales were on... we got pretty distracted. After we released some endorphins, we wandered down some quaint streets and took a lot of photos.

Ghent

Before we went to the castle, we stopped in to this little chocolate store just off main street to get our daily allowance of four specialty chocolates. Choosing which ones is one of the biggest daily decisions that we make. I was off looking at some cutely wrapped bars of chocolate and I just got whatever Sarah got, and let me tell you, those were hands down the best chocolates I've ever had! After our castle visit we went back to the store and bought some for gifts. I love finding adorable little one of a kind stores like that where the chocolate is made by the father in law and husband and the wife runs the store... that's when you know its the real deal.

Brussels

Moving on from the chocolate rant... we visited the castle which was very much of a heavy stone, knight in shining armour, torture room, and dungeon kind of castle. They did in fact have an exhibit of torture devices and methods that were mind blowing. I'm not sure who came up with these ideas but they would have to have been very messed up people. We climbed a lot of very narrow spiral stairs there, and I'm not sure how they used to climb those in complete darkness with just their torch or candle for light, especially if they had consumed a large quantity of ale (well I guess here it would be Belgian beer, but I always think of knights and stuff drinking ale). It was pretty scary doing those stairs with electricity, although carrying a lot of shopping bags may have increased the difficulty level.
Before getting on our train, we had a light afternoon snack/dinner of croque monsieurs, which I learned about in my french class in school, and I've been wanting to try one so bad. Basically its a more elaborate grilled cheese sandwich, but I really liked it and I will make them at home.

Antwerp's main attraction

Antwerp is a little bit like Brussels, but there's not a whole lot going on there. It's a port city, and there's some cool things there, but they are spread out pretty far, and we only had a couple hours there. The number one thing to see in Antwerp is their train station, and it is a very very nice train station. Definitely the most beautiful I've seen, and its supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Europe. Other than that, there's not a whole lot to mention except that we had some delicious lasagna and went shopping, which seems to be a thing we do when we take day trips to Belgium cities. 

Annecy/Strasbourg

Postcard Annecy

We had a couple extra days in our itinerary in case we needed them somewhere, and we have used them up yet, so we decided to spend a day in Annecy, a small french town on the Swiss border. 

Flowers and bikes. Cute!

Annecy is a really adorable place! Its nestled in the French Alps, is situated on a very large lake, and has the cutest old town with canals. Its the not-as-touristy French version of Venice I would say. It was really small and quiet. There were some tourists, but I felt like most of them were French, so I think its mostly off the American tourism map.

View of the castle complex from one of the castle windows

It was pretty cold during our one day to explore Annecy, so we put on our sweaters and set out to see old town. Its so adorable! There were tons of cute little stores and restaurants. We aren't going to Switzerland at all on this trip, so we figured Annecy was the closest we'd get (it actually was part of Switzerland for a long time a while back), so we had an authentic Swiss cheese fondue for lunch, which was so amazing! I'm not a huge cheese fan, but that meal was very delicious.

Fondue! 

There's a really old jail in old town that is the most photographed building in Annecy. Its really photogenic and we took some photos, and then went inside where they have an architecture exhibit about the jail as well the history of the building. It was very interesting.

Then we went to a little castle on the hill and peeked around. It was probably the most random museum ever. It had a bit of history of the castle, but there were random abstract art exhibits everywhere as well as lots of history of this St Anthony guy. In another building they had an aquarium and some information about fishing with nets, and on the next floor they had a bunch of bird skeletons and taxidermy. By this time we were pretty much done, so we headed back to our hostel to have dinner, pack, and do some interneting.

Annecy is a great place to relax and hang out. They have a really nice park by the lake, and I bet its excellent when its warm. It was really nice to have a chill day without any plans after the whirlwind that was Paris and Barcelona. 

Random blue hallway

So after Annecy, we headed over to Strasbourg, a small city on the German border in France. Unlike Annecy, Strasbourg is really touristy, and we couldn't figure out why! The old town was about the same size as Annecy's, maybe a bit larger, and it has the old timber frame construction in like half of the old town. All of the Strasbourg pictures you always see come from one street in old town, so after you see that, you've seen Strasbourg.

Annecy skyline and Alps

We walked around old town for a couple hours, but everything was really expensive and there wasn't really anything to do except shopping and eating nice dinners. Shopping would have been fun if we didn't already have overly stuffed backpacks. After about two hours we decided there was no way we could spend 3 days here, so we hit up a cafe and started figuring out where we could escape to the next morning, since our hostel/hotel did not even have wifi.

Postcard Strasbourg

I didn't hate Strasbourg, but I think its somewhere to visit when you're looking for a relaxing time with fancy dinners and shopping, not when you're looking for an adventure. We had enough relaxation in Annecy to do us for a while. Hopefully Brussels, our Strasbourg replacement, will be a bit more exciting! At least there will be chocolate and Belgian waffles, which I'm really pumped for.
PS We're really done with French people. Sarah says they have the personality of a Siamese cat, and that is exactly right!

Barcelona

Sagrada Familia ceiling

I wasn't really sure what to expect from Barcelona. I didn't really know anything about it except it had Gaudi architecture and palm trees, but its one of those places that everybody raves about, like Prague, and I loved Prague so I figured Barcelona must be cool too. Yep, Barcelona is really awesome. It kind of feels like Miami on spring break. 

There's tons of young people and the beach is always packed. We didn't do a whole lot in Barcelona. We became very lazy and slept a lot. We did go on a tour of Gaudi's architectural achievements, and he was really creative but really crazy too. There is a famous basilica in Barcelona designed by him called Sagrada Familia, and it looks completely ridiculous from the outside. Its been under construction for 150 years, and it's supposed to be finished by 2026, but I doubt this will happen. Unlike my opinion of most monumental churches in Europe, this one has a meh exterior, but an absolutely fabulous interior. Don't get me wrong, when you walk up to it, its so huge and very impressive, but the facade that you see in all the pictures looks like sandcastle made with dripping wet sand. I'm really glad we went inside though, because its absolutely beautiful, like no other church you've ever seen. Its really modern and doesn't feel like a church at all. Its by far the most bizarre building I've ever seen, both from the outside and inside. 

Cool lamp post designed by Gaudi

Our first night was the eve of their San Juan festival, which was ridiculous. The Spaniards know how to party for sure. The problem is, they have siestas in the evening before they party, so they party until 7 am which is really inconvenient for when you're tired and want to sleep!

Super excited about this mound of meringue I'm
about to devour.

In North America, when we have big holidays, its a very structured way of celebrating. Everyone has their bbqs, there's a firework show put on by the city, and you do your thing. In Spain, everyone buys their own fireworks or firecrackers, you can buy the big ones too, and it results in a complete gong show. Needless to say when we got up the next morning and ventured out for bunch, the streets were basically empty. It was very impressive how quickly they can clean up from their parties though!

Hippies blow massive bubbles every evening for the amusement of
small children

Of course we went to the beach because we had some bad farmer tans to even out after the last month and a half of traveling, so the first time we went we were all responsible and wore sunscreen. The problem is, we didn't get tan at all, so the second time we decided to skip sunscreen and deal with the results because we really needed to get rid of our awful neck tan lines... and that's why I currently cannot move very much, let alone carry a 30 lb backpack. That is actually the worst part of the burn is carrying a backpack. It hurts so much! Anyway, at least our tan lines are evened out now.

Post sunburn fun at the Gaudi Park

The old town in Barcelona is really cool to walk around in. Some of the streets, especially in the Gothic quarter, are so narrow its crazy.

Photogenic gothic bridge

The food in Spain was pretty decent. We had supper with D and his companion at a really good burger place, but our authentic Spanish meal wasn't that impressive, but probably because it was in the touristy part and they never make good food there. They had these things made with a slice of baguette with all sorts of food artistically stacked on top. I don't remember what they were called, but they resembled a boat, and I wanted to try one so bad but didn't get the chance. 

We really liked these street lights by our hostel

Next time I'm in Barcelona, I am definitely trying the boat sandwich, visiting the authentic gelato shop we found, wearing at least 10 SPF sunscreen, and not trying to catch a train at 9 am. That's just way too early.

The trees were shedding these yellow flowers all over the city

Paris Part II

View from the Arc de Triomphe

Paris has a lot to offer. I'm just going to answer your question right now - yes, I saw the Mona Lisa and no, I did no climb the Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure why that is such a big thing... sure it has amazing views of the city, but when you take panoramic photo of Paris, the most iconic structure is not in the picture! So instead we climbed the Arc de Triomphe. It was really cool because twelve roads lead to the Arc de Triomphe into a big roundabout around it, so you get some really cool photos down the streets. About the Eiffel Tower - its a great place to have a picnic, and every hour on the hour starting at 10 you can see the tower sparkle and its really magical!

Sarah at the Louvre

When we were in Paris, we bought a museum pass, so we of course went to the Louvre, at night in the rain, which was pretty cool. We also went to the Orsay museum, which was Sarah's favorite of the art museums. It has a huge collection of impressionist art, and it was really beautiful! The Orangerie is another smaller art museum with more modern art, but they had this cool oval room with Monet's water lilies surrounding you.

My most favorite sculpture EVER. It's
so amazing. 

Paris also has some rather unique and random museums - such as the Sewer Museum where you actually go down into the sewers that smell awful and learn how it works. That was pretty cool, but I wouldn't go again because of the smell. 

Catacombs - really hard to take photos in here because its really dark and
you can't use flash. Wish I had a tripod for this place!

We also went to the Paris catacombs (tunnels under the city where they got all the stone for building pretty things), which is by far the creepiest place I have ever been and everyone should definitely go!! We had to wait in line for an hour, which was the longest we've ever waited for anything I'm pretty sure. It was so worth it. They give the whole history of the catacombs, and at one point they took all the bones from an old mass grave that needed to be moved and they hired a guy to organize the bones in a decorative fashion. Once, they even held a concert down there with a full symphony and played various funeral marches and stuff. That would have been really weird.

Notre Dame

The Notre Dame, of course,is beautiful. The thing with Gothic cathedrals, is they mostly all look the same inside, but the outsides are all quite different. I'm sure Sarah would disagree with that and say they all look the same everywhere. Parisians prefer Notre Dame from her backside, and its very easy to see why. She's quite pretty, with a nice little garden as well!

Louvre at night

There is a bridge in Paris called Pont Neuf that is the oldest standing bridge across the Seine, because its the first one they built out of stone. Henry IV commissioned it, and there's this really funny legend that goes along with the bridge. If you look closely, all along the bridge are sculptures of really grotesque faces. Apparently Henry IV threw a huge party with lots of famous people there to show off his bridge, and he hired a bunch of artists to sketch the guests with the bridge as a souvenir, but he figured they would all get lost in the river, so he had the artists sculpt them. Unfortunately they were all drunk already and so all the faces on the bridge are of drunk people at Henry IV's bridge party. 

Pont Neuf

Making use of our museum pass, we hit up a few more random things. One was the Conciergerie Palace, where they imprisoned people before beheading them. They have Marie Antoinette's cell there, and it was pretty interesting. Pretty much right next door is the Sainte Chappelle which was pretty small considering churches in Europe, but it has really pretty stained glass, and is a good place to peek in if you have time.
Also we went into Hotel des Invalids where Napoleon's tomb is (which is really huge and fancy), and also there is a war museum there of sorts where there is Napoleon's horse in real life. Apparently Napoleon stuffed him. Of course there's lots of swords and guns. Then on the top floor is this really cool thing where they have relief models made in the 17th century they used for defense technique planning. I really liked that.
Of course we went to MORE museums - one being a music museum, which was really fun and Sarah really liked it. They had tons of old instruments and sound samples of them being played. There was also a huge collection of really pretty pianos.