Amsterdam

This week we hosted Justin's friend Adam. After several nights out in Cologne (one of which to celebrate my birthday, that lasted a lit-tle too long), we were excited for a little weekend getaway. At the end of the week we took a little road trip (about 3 hours) north to Amsterdam. Justin had been before but I had not.  To say the trip was full of interesting events is an understatement. First we had a little trouble navigating all the bicycles (What? You didn’t know that there were more bicycles than people in Amsterdam?) and trams. Poor Justin has to do all of the driving so I can imagine the stress, but he’s getting pretty good at driving in Europe!

After getting “dinged at” by the tram, while turning left into the street (if you want to call it that) to gain entrance to our garage, we finally pulled into our first inner city car-elevator! What?! This thing was smaller than the parking spots here—and that is SAYING something! (another source of stress) We got our ticket, got some broken English instructions and pulled into the sardine can to be lifted to the rooftop or the basement, we chose the rooftop. Oh, and not only was this the vehicle lift, it was also for people to go up and down too. We fortunately, for our first lofting, went up solo. This was less awkward, but yet more nerve-wracking because we would have noone to turn to if we got stuck!  As the gate opened, we pulled out and found the largest parking spot we could… which still meant we got out of the car, as he backed in and wiggled out himself! Then back to the lift to go back down, with our luggage. Fortunately there weren’t any cars coming up, and another couple going down with the appearance of being local (they were a young couple dressed up for the night out in Amsterdam—it was a Friday night after all). In the end though, we had to ride up with a vehicle, standing on the ‘edge of a building’ style ledges that were the curbs within the elevator. That was awkward. No others rode down with us though, and we were home free (watching for trams this time).

Quick decision: Basement or Rooftop?!

Going up! (while holding our breath!)

To fill you in on the visit to Amsterdam itself, we had a decent hotel and location. Unfortunately though, we forgot that it was a holiday weekend which resulted in all the lines for the museums being extremely long by the time we ventured out in the mornings. We skipped them and tried to get some pictures in front of the “I Amsterdam” sign which was literally crawling with people, all over it. We also toured the Heineken Brewery, even though it wasn’t where actual production even takes place, it was still pretty cool. They had plenty of tastings though and pretty cool interactive games like video games and actual futbol kicking contest. The end of the tour provided a canal ride to their other gift store where you could pick up your “lazy e” bottle opener (next time you see the Heineken logo, you’ll notice the font’s ‘lazy” e’s. Along the canal ride, of course I took lots of pictures, all the while we scored 2^nd in the trivia contest among the others on the boat.

One evening, after noticing a flyer for it, we had to try out the “Ice Bar.” Yep, just what you’re thinking, maybe you’ve seen the ads with drinks served in ‘ice cups’ and participants donning thermal coats & gloves. They wouldn’t allow pictures inside, except by their photographer, so unfortunately I can’t show you what it was like. Just imagine sitting on an ice bench sipping ICE cold beer. It was a little too commercial and there was only a little section of a real bar. It was definitely overpriced, but it was a cool experience to have done once (pun intended).

Later... The Red Light District – these ladies were working it! 

In their best 'neon' light.

I was impressed with how this picture taken from 
my phone turned out... boys love their toys!

Tidbit learned from my days at VRBO/HomeAway, you can 
actually rent a house boat on the canal to stay in!

So beautiful! 

No kidding?! Thanks for the warning Heineken!

Frozen sign on the wall at the Heineken gift shop. 

One of the many flower markets. Most sell tulip bulbs by bulk--
 I had no idea there were SO MANY varieties of  tulips!

Adam was brave enough to order the "Herring" from a 
'semi-permanent' street food stand.
It's a customary food in Amsterdam. 
Justin and I tried it... I wasn't a fan.

One of the many canals and bicycles. 
I read that there's actually a bike fishing day each year, 
where students fish stolen bicycles out of the canals!

This was a quick weekend trip that I hope J & I can revisit because the Canals were really fascinating and I would love to visit the Van Gogh museum, perhaps on a non-holiday weekend when the weather warms up a bit. Also, we’ll plan to drive outside of Amsterdam further into the country side to see the flower fields and windmills. 

Brussels & Ghent

Belgium

(by Justin)

After Adam’s visit from the US and our trip together to Amsterdam, Chelsy and I were feeling pretty worn out from traveling.  We had traveled 2 weeks around Germany with friends, and then hosted another friend for a week and capping it off with a trip to Amsterdam.  It would probably be best if we took it easy for a while, right?  Wrong!  We’re in Europe, with exotic places just around the corner.  After decompressing for a few days following the Amsterdam trip, we immediately started planning our next trip.  We wanted to go somewhere close and within driving distance, so we chose to go to Brussels for the weekend. Brussels isn’t necessarily known for a lot (JCVD maybe, “The Muscles from Brussels”), but sometimes those are the best types of trips.  It is easy to get caught up marking famous landmarks off on a checklist, when in reality it is sometimes better to just have a walk around and stop in a nice shop or have a beer at the corner bar.  This was our intention in Brussels at least. So I took off on a Friday and we started the 3 hour drive up to Brussels.  I was hoping for some relief from the driving madness that was Amsterdam.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get much relief in Brussels.  There were not many bikers and random people to dodge this time, but there were bizarre road signs and construction that made it very confusing.  I simply went into defensive driving mode and made sure that I didn’t hit anything.  Hopefully I didn’t break too many rules getting to the parking garage. For this trip, we decided to travel on the cheap and got a hotel that was $98 dollars a night, which is cheap for European hotels booked at the last second.  It turned out to be a really good decision as the hotel was fairly nice and pretty centrally located. After we arrived on Friday night, we immediately took off walking towards Grand Place (the central old town square).  When visiting a European city with virtually zero preparation (did I mention we planned this trip about 2 days before we went?), it’s usually a good idea just to head to the big square in Old Town and start exploring outwards from there.  On the way to Grand Place, we stopped to get a snack.  Since we are in Belgium, the two big snacks are French fries and dessert waffles (pommes frites and wafels locally).  If you know Chelsy and myself, then you probably already know that we ended up getting a waffle as our snack.  I believe this first waffle (of many) was covered in melted chocolate and strawberries.  Not a bad way to start the weekend! 

The Grand Place

The Grand Place in daylight.

Another perspective, with shops and restaurants (and WAFELS!)

All lit up at night. It was cold, but beautiful!

Glad I had the camera charged, my phone wouldn't have captured this!

Wafel mit Creme

We reached Grand Place and it is a beautiful town square, although smaller than expected from the pictures. After taking a few of our own pictues, we noticed from a sign that the "Manneken Pis" was nearby. In a moment of tourist check listing, we figured we would go check it out as it was only a 10-15 minute detour and there was bound to be more waffle shops along the way! We reach the Manneken Pis and it's pretty much as advertised-- A small fountain that consists of a small boy peeing. Apparently its over 400 years old, which is impressive, and there were lots of tourists taking pictures which was amusing in itself. 

That's it!

After all of the "excitement" from the Manneken Pis, we decided to rest a while and have some drinks. We found a bar nearby and ordered some delicious Belgian beer (this would continue to be a theme throughout this trip). In the bar, we found out that as a tradition, they dress up the Manneken PIs every year in different costumes and have been doing so for 100 or so years. Okay, I guess that makes it a bit more interesting. With our beers we had some fairly nasty cheese. We ate as much as we needed to not arouse any suspicion, but enjoyed the beers, immensely! 

A picture after dark once we left this bar...

We needed to go back to the hotel to add some layers to our clothing and pick up an umbrella as the weather had worsened. By the time we got back outside, it was really cold and rainy. Instead of walking the 15 minutes back into the center of town, we decided to eat next to the hotel at what I would call "the Applebees's of Brussels". That's not a compliment. It was serviceable, but not great. We figured as much going in, but bad weather will severely limit your options. After a late dinner, we called it a night as there were not many options of things to do in the bad weather, and there were no bars nearby. 

The beer at the restaurant was not sub-par though,
we're in Belgium after all!

On Saturday, we got out early so we could see and do a lot (11 AM). Chelsy had read online that a lot of people recommended the René Magritte Museum (he was an artist from Brussels). OK, I'm up for anything, let's do it!  Hmm, this seems to be a long metro ride out to the museum (Strike 1). We get off the metro. This doesn't look like a museum district, looks more like a shady neighborhood (Strike 2). We walk (quickly) through the shady neighborhood, following the map for the museum. We end up passing right by it once, because it is basically just a person's house (Strike 3). You have to ring a doorbell to get in. We hesitated, but since we had adventured this far, we figured, what the heck? All in all, it's the best "museum" that's in a house, (the subject's house) that I've ever seen. No wait, I saw the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. OK, the second best. It was actually a decent but small museum, and the adventure to get out there may have made it better, but overall, we couldn't justify all the high marks in the reviews, out of all of Brussels. 

Screen shot of my TripAdvisor App
proving I didn't make this up... 600+ reviews at 4/5.

We should have seen it coming with the mosaic art along the sidewalks. Not that he  was known for mosaics, but just the art in general. 

Oh, there it is... 

While in this part of town, we decided to travel a bit further and see the Atomium in northern Brussels. It is basically a huge atomic structure that was built for a World's Fair about 50 years ago. You can see pictures of it below and even views from the top. There was a decent crowd of tourists (since it was a holiday weekend), but that didn't stop us. The Atomium was pretty fun and it was cool that you can go into nearly all of the spheres or "atoms" of the structure. We had fun, ate some waffles, and learned a lot about the history of the structure and also some other random science facts as well. 

It started to clear up as we ascended, great for the view...

Each sphere was connected with long escalators.
This one had skylights. 

This one had no skylights, but cool lighting. 

If you use a longer shutter speed on the camera, it looks like this!

There was a beautiful park and avenue leading up to the Atomium.  

This was one of the views from the top, looking down at the other spheres. 

Watching it light up as the sky cleared up
and night fell, was really cool!

By the end of the tour, the camera battery had died,
so this was taken with my phone. 

What do you know? There was a Wafel Truck just outside of the Atomium.
We thought it was a sign!

After our excursion to the outskirts of town, we headed back into the city and went to the nearest bar for a few more Belgian beers. Delicious as always. Before traveling there, we had read about some type of light festival in Brussels that weekend, so we went to the river to check it out. There were several areas performing laser-style lighting shows and related things. It was a cool thing to see and made the night more fun.

Is it cheating to say we've now seen the Leaning (Light Tower) of Pisa?

The next morning, we decided to leave the hotel early (11 AM) and use the day to see a different city. We drove up to Ghent, which is only about 30-45 minutes from Brussels. (Pronounced with a 'ghe' like gator, not 'ge' like gentleman, for those familiar with the city in north western KY along the Ohio River. - Tidbit typed by Chelsy) :)

Ghent is a very beautiful medieval style town-- and very well preserved and maintained. It is a lot like Bruges, but a bit less popular for whatever reason. We spent several hours walking around Ghent and exploring the town. We started with a really good lunch sitting next to two spry older ladies who seemed to be having a great time. After lunch, we went into a castle that had a really good tour containing medieval weapons and torture devices (much cooler than an art or history filled castle). We took several pictures, take a look:

This was apparently a 'traditional snack' but no one we've talked to
since has heard of these 'Noses." They were gooey-filled gummy-candy - ish?
 Hard to describe, and not terribly delicious, but we now have a story to tell. 

This was just a sidewalk view along the canal.
So common, but so beautiful!

This picture explains the umbrella Justin's holding in the next picture,
although it appears to be sunny. The weather was deceiving, for sure!

The Gravensteen Castle was a great find!

We really didn't realize this castle was in Ghent-- again we planned this trip quickly without researching much. It was a great surprise find, here's the Wikipedia Link if you want to read more about it. Check out these views from a top and inside... we were so happy the sun came out. And if you notice the flags-- it was quite windy up there!

A guillotine and it's blade below...

Not all parts were renovated from the initial 1120 construction. 

The castle's chapel

Some restaurants and hotels nearby for sightseers like us!

This was the entrance, I couldn't get a good shot of the
lower half with all the people in the way.

A little ways from the castle, back towards the city center, were some beautiful churches. 

Again, Ghent was a charming little town and despite the wind and rain, we were very glad to have stopped on our weekend trip. We left around 4 PM and managed to make it back to Cologne by 7 PM. Just enough time to settle in for a few hours before going to sleep and starting another work week. We have really been packing in a lot of travel up to this point and maybe we should wait a while before our next trip, like maybe 3 weeks this time. OK, maybe two weeks. This should be fun (and exhausting)!