We are home…safe and sound…and possibly even on this time zone. I think we slept for like 12 or 13 hours last night…but I feel refreshed and will work on getting caught up around the house. The last 24 hours of our trip were probably the worst…but honestly, if those are all of the issues we had, then I’d say we had an outstanding trip! Let me explain:

Amsterdam was exactly as expected…very touristy and packed with people. I’m not sure I’ll ever need to go back there again. Our hotel was very nice, but old…very old…and because of that, there were no elevators. Typically this would be fine…especially at this point because we’re so used to walking and stairs. Our room is up on the 2^nd floor (that’s actually the 3^rd by Europe standards) and the stairs are, well, how do I explain this? Ummm…almost straight up and definitely not to code! That was fun…NOT! But the view from our room was outstanding (as you saw in the picture on my last post). The downside was that there were a ton of people walking around on the sidewalks below, so it was noisy and Lord knows we were getting a contact high from all of the marijuana smokers! Ugh. Somehow we slept okay (a good 4.5-5 hours) and made it out the door on time to get our taxi. After wandering around the airport for an hour and a half, we made our way through the long lines, the pat downs in securtiy and to our gate where we immediately were able to get on the plane. At this point, we realize our original seat choices were changed and we had the front row seats. Good news here was we had a ton of leg room. Bad news was, we had nowhere to stow our stuff under any seats! The storage space above our seats were “for emergency equipment only” so we were screwed! Keith had to find a place for both of our suitcases somewhere down the aisle (fighting all of the people getting on the plane!) and then after we tried to hide our other stuff under our legs…the flight attendants were onto us and took our other stuff away to stow underneath somewhere else. I was very nervous that our stuff was not right there near us…but it was all accounted for in the end.

Now that we’re settling in for our long 11 hour flight, we realize that the TV screen on the wall in front of us was only showing in 2 colors (orange and black) instead of full color.  Our trays popped out of our armrests…but were made for size 2 people so we had to eat on our laps (which was NOT easy). Somehow, we had a smooth flight and made it home on time. The best thing about the flights were these little things my Dad told me about…”Ear Planes.” I’m telling you, I’m never flying without those again. I have major ear issues when flying and on both flights, I had hardly any pain! Thanks for that Dad!!  So, we get off the plane in Portland and have to go through customs, security, etc.  We declared all of our stuff, but apparently, my tulip bulbs were contraband and taken away from me!  All of that work to hand pick all of my tulips (not to mention the price we paid!) were all gone in a matter of moments.  The customs agent was really nice and sympathetic…but I was really upset about getting ripped off in Amsterdam.  No one told me I had to have “official” bulbs!  Ugh.  I guess I’ll know for next time.

So…that’s it.  Our Europe experience was an overall success.  I think we both agree that we enjoyed Germany MUCH more and our favorite place to visit was Monschau (the place that had the castle ruins and the glass blower).  Over the whole trip, we experienced the European culture…got to visit some really awesome places…learned some historical things…and enjoyed being on vacation.  And really…isn’t that what it’s all about?

Thanks for keeping up with our blog.  I enjoyed creating it for you…I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Until our next vacation!   🙂

It’s time to say good-bye to Belgium.  It was a good week, but we’re on the final countdown now for our trek home.

First things first.  It’s 10am and Keith is enjoying a Corsendonk on tap at the bar in the station.  That’s livin’ man!

We’ve been on the train the last 2 hours (overall) and just pulled in to Antwerp Station.  How beautiful is this place?

Honestly!  So, so pretty!  Anyway…we change trains here for our final push to Amsterdam.

Hahahha!  Keith is showing me how done he is with all of this picture taking.  😛  Here we are on the train.

We’ve made it…Amsterdam Central Station!  Good-bye Belgium…hello Netherlands!

Boats on the canal.  These next few pictures are what we saw as we were hiking a mile and a half to our hotel….with all of our luggage in hand.  Can you say HELLO!!  I’M A TOURIST!

Interestingly enough..the architecture is a bit different…but somewhat the same.

I’m not sure what any of these buildings are but they sure are pretty.

Hooray!  More construction…but interesting architecture next to it.

Here I am picking out tulip bulbs in the flower market!  I can’t wait to see how these bloom in my yard come springtime.  I wish I had more room in my luggage.  I would have bought much more!  I’ll be lucky if I can find room for what I already got.  🙂

Final picture for tonight….the view from our hotel room.  It’s so lovely.  We have the windows open and we can see the night sky.  We waked around a good part of Amsterdam (with the very limited time we had)…though I can tell you that with the throngs of tourists, bikes, trams, taxis and buses…we’ve avoided places like the Red Light District and the main drags.  It’s going to be a long travel day again tomorrow…but at the end of it, we’ll be home.

When we left the USA, we had a large list of what we were hoping to see on our trip.  I don’t think it matters how long you are on vacation…you probably won’t have enough time to see everything.  This is definitely true for us. Some cuts need to be made for time constraints, but you do the best you can to see as much as possible.  Then, there are situations completely out of your control. This was the case yesterday when we were in Brussels…

Not having good internet connection, and not understanding the language in Belgium…we were quite cut off from what was happening in the world.  Well, we hit quite a number of places in Brussels (as you saw by yesterday’s blog) but the last thing we wanted to see before getting back on the train was this park.  It’s no ordinary park (as you can see in the pictures on the link) and would have been amazing to see.  Well, we got off the train and as we went upstairs to the street level (through a TON of construction), there was a maze of things to maneuver through to just try to get across the street to the park.  Well, as soon as we walked about a half a mile through the maze (where we could SEE the park entrance), we were stopped by the police and asked if we had a badge!  Now imagine this…here we are…carrying a bag full of belgian chocolate, a backpack and a camera bag (can you say tourist?)…and you ask if we have a BADGE?!?!!?  Come on now!  All we wanted to do was to go across the street to the park!  At that point I was done.  We had been walking for 4-5 hours and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.  I looked at Keith and asked, “…what the hell is going on??  I don’t care if the heads of states are here…I just want to see the park!!!”  Well, apparently we were right next to the European Union Headquarters where the heads of all participating countries were in town trying to deal with the Euro “crisis”.  Nice.  Who knew!!  So, the point of this story is…we didn’t get to see all we wanted to.  But that just leaves more for next time…whenever that will be.  🙂

Now…let’s get on to the pictures!

So…in Knokke-Heist…how do you move your furniture into these tiny entries?  Apparently, like this!  It was really cool to see from our window.

Nuts!!  But that answered my first question when we arrived .  😛

Anyway…because it was our last full day, we wanted to stay closer to Knokke-Heist so we had time in the evening to get everything packed up.  We wanted to explore more of Bruges, so we decided that would be a good place to go.  This time we wanted to explore the less touristy area, the lace museum and walk the back streets.  Thankfully, we got exactly what we wanted.

Hahaha!!  Keith found this in the beer store…FBI = Famous Beer Inspector.  🙂

Along the side streets, the trees are all grown like this.  Flat like a wall and trained to grow along those wires.  It looked really cool!

This is the church across from those trees.

Here we are along the canals.  It’s just like a fairy tale land!

Here’s Keith checking the map to ensure we’re going the right way.  The area he’s standing in is a flea market type of place set up in a square with pre-made areas set up for vendors to show their wares.  It’s covered too.  I think every city that has farmer’s markets should have one!

Well…look at that…Keith found a local pub.  Hee hee!

The next place we went to was the lace museum and this church…the Jeruselemark.  It’s much simpler and smaller than all other churches we’ve seen.  But it’s a neighborhood type church steeped in history.  The item Keith is looking at is a family crypt.  We are unsure as to who it was but it had a man and woman shown on the top, along with their dogs.  There are very old family crests lining the crypt which we’re guessing has a strong tie to the church.

The view from the other side of the church.

Keith captured me just sitting and taking it all in.  There was so much to see all around.

In another area of the church there was a little room (that I was looking into) that was a memorial to Jesus.  There was a life sized statue of Him lying down as if he just came off  the cross. Interesting.  From there, we went to see the lacemakers creating lace.  What a process to do it and watching how they create the designs were fantastic!  I couldn’t take any pictures in there though.

Now just take a look at the brick work on this building.  Especially above the windows in the archways.  Those were just some great masons!

Here is the famous Belfry in Bruges.  We were going to climb up the steps (all 353 of them) to the top but apparently there were a lot of people in line with a ton of squirly teenagers so we decided to avoid it.  From here we said good-bye to Bruges for the last time and felt like we explored all we wanted to see.

And for the final funny pictures of the day…on our walk back to our apartment, we came across this sign.  I’m sure you can guess what it means.  It was sitting next to this:

Hahahahahahaa!!!  That’s for my pet loving friends.  🙂  Until next blog post!

I have spent the last hour writing up my blog (seeing as how we’ve had so many wi-fi issues…gee, I didn’t know we were in a third world country!) and it all of a sudden disappeared!  Grrr!!  Anyway….yesterday we went to Brussels to visit some of the things we scoped out a few days before.  As soon as we got off the train at the Central Station, this is the first thing we came across:

It’s Galeries St. Hubert.  A pedestrian only set of shops covered by this gorgeous glass ceiling.  My picture doesn’t even do it justice.  This is the best shot out of all of them I tried.

Keith found the mecca of beer.  Decent prices too.  It’s too bad we couldn’t ship any home.  Oh well.

Next up…this building.  Not sure what it is, but it’s massive…and beautiful!

And here we are.  I know you know what we look like…but we’ll be home soon…and I didn’t want you to forget.  HA!   Here we are in The Grand Place in Belgium.  You’ll see what I mean in a minute:

This is what the place has looked like for over 500 years!

The square is full of little shops, restaurants and museums.  Please note the building on the far right of the picture.  It’s in the middle of being renovated…but has a picture of it in front so you know what it’s supposed to look like.  Hahahaha!

Among all of these museums, there is a beer museum.  We learned all about the history of beer in Belgium.  Did you know that around 1900, there were 3,223 different breweries here in Belgium!?!?!?!  NUTS!

Next to the beer museum was the Ommegang restaurant.  It was a swanky place that had really nice food.  After our meal, I was outside the restaurant taking some pictures when Keith got this shot of me:

Hahahaha!  Hilarious.  🙂

Now we’re starting our long trek around the city.  Boy have we walked a TON on this vacation!!

Here is a typical street in Brussels….away from the tourist areas…just normal every day living.  I like it!

This is a Tryptich from inside the history of Belgium museum.  It is one of 3 that were on display and was so beautiful to look at.

These are old fashioned taps made out of porcelin.  Here is the back of them:

Now in Brussels there is a famous statue called Maanekken Pis.  Many people go to see him…what he does…and what outfit he’s wearing at the moment.  We had no interest but in this same museum, there are several of his outfits:

This outfit is from 1952.  And yes…he is holding what you think he’s holding (there, in the middle of the picture).

This is his Cyprus outfit!  OPA!

Oh yes….these are every bit as good as it looks.  These kinds of shops are EVERYWHERE in every town we’ve been to!

And now, the Notre Dame Cathedral…and all of it’s glory:

It was…as all churches were…just…breathtaking.

And finally…me really enjoying a lovely piece of handmade chocolate.  Mmmmm!

I have to post about today’s adventure…but will wait on that until tomorrow…when I am sitting on a train for hours heading to our final destination…Amsterdam!!  So, until then……..

Sorry I didn’t post in the blog yesterday.  We’ve had issues with the internet here…not sure why the Wi-Fi is such a problem in this country, but it is.  Sigh.  Anyway…we took yesterday as a rest day here.  Not much happened….but we wanted to share a couple of pictures from the grocery store:

This is the most disgusting milk we’ve ever tasted.  In fact, we didn’t think it was milk at all…buttermilk was more of the guess…and we ended up throwing it all away.  Ick.  And then there’s this:

Hahahaa!!  Who names their company this?

That’s about all for this day.  More coming up…