Day 2 In London

We started our second day in London by taking the Tube to Tower Hill station, where we met up with Calvin to go see the Tower of London and the nearby Tower Bridge.  We decided to eat before going sightseeing, and ended up at a place called The Minories for our first pub meal.  The prices were astonishingly cheap – they had a huge selection of entrees that were two for ₤7.45 – and we shared five entrees (Chile Con Carne, Fish & Chips, Pie of the Day, Bangers and Mash, and Cajun Chicken Salad) and two desserts for less than ₤30!  The food wasn’t anything phenomenal, but it was decent for the price, especially compared to what we’ve been paying for so far!

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Day 1 In London

Since leaving Spain and heading to France, the language barrier hasn’t been that big of an issue because we’ve always found someone that speaks some English, but I’m still very excited about the fact that today we’re back in a country where English is the primary language!  Not only do I not have to worry anymore about who I can ask for directions and stuff like that, I love the fact that we’re surrounded by sexy British accents!   This could be a great couple of months… (more…)

More Dim Sum :)

Today for our last day in Amsterdam, we headed to the last major tourist sight we haven’t been to – Ann Frank’s house.  Unfortunately, like yesterday, we started off with bad luck because after waiting in line for 45 minutes to buy tickets, we got to the front and found out their credit card machines weren’t working and we didn’t have enough cash on us for the tickets!  When we couldn’t find the ATM the girl at the ticket office directed us to, we decided to skip Ann Frank’s house and headed straight to Chinatown for our final dim sum meal – and this time we knew the correct name of the restaurant my aunt was talking about after another phone call to her last night!

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Diiiimmm Suuummmm!!!

Because we felt like we scheduled ourselves for too many days in Amsterdam, these last two days have been rather uneventful and we decided to stay near the B&B to catch up on some sleep and explore the area we’re living in.  Today we headed out to continue our sightseeing, with a plan to catch a weekly free lunch concert at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam’s prized concert hall (every Wednesday from September to June you can hear the featured orchestra rehearse for the evening concert for free at 12:30 pm), and then head to Chinatown to try a dim sum restaurant that was recommended on the Internet.

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I Amsterdam

Our second day in Amsterdam was sadly Matt’s last day, so we jammed in as many things as we could fit in one day, starting with the famous I Amsterdam sign at Museumplein and the nearby Van Gogh museum… (more…)

In Brugge

Because the hostel made us wait until 4 to check in yesterday and there wasn’t a secure location to put our bags (they suggested we leave them in the common room and they would “keep an eye on them” but we didn’t feel that was safe), we didn’t do much apart from going out for dinner at a restaurant called Bierbrasserie Cambrinus after checking in.  Although the food we had wasn’t as good as Le Fin de Siecle in Brussels, it was decent and there was a huge selection of 400 beers to choose from – the drink menu is one inch thick and I had to spend 10 min reading it to decide!  It was a nice relaxing start to our time in Brugge and today we found out what Brugge really has to offer… (more…)

Some New Friends & Le Fin de Siecle Again!

One of the best things about travelling is the friends you make along the way, especially the ones you really keep in touch with and try to see again (let’s face it, most of us will only see each other once in our lifetime if we don’t live in the same area).  We’ve met lots of people during our travels so far, but there have only been a handful we’ve regularly kept in touch with since.  I think today we’ve added two more to that list – Allie and Ryan from Florida who are in Brussels for their honeymoon and are staying at the same B&B as us

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More Good Food & Beer

After a day of walking around the historic town center of Brussels, I am happy to report that there are some really clean and really nice parts of town, but it smells like pee in lots of areas!  Perhaps the fact that a statue called the Manneken Pis (Dutch for little man urinating) is a famous Brussels landmark should have given me a hint of what to expect… (more…)

The Best Food So Far!

After a good nights sleep at Novotel (four star really does make difference!), we made our way to Brussels this afternoon where we encountered the most confusing transit system so far (worse than Berlin!).  Our directions to our B&B said to take tram # 3 and it took us half an hour of wandering to figure out where to catch tram #3 – instead of having one central tram/bus stop at the train station like most cities, there were about 6 different tram stops all over and around the train station so we had to run around checking each stop to see which tram stopped there.  Tram # 3 turned out to be in the least obvious place possible, underground where the metro was, and we couldn’t figure out why it’s called a tram instead of a metro because they look identical! 

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The ING Marathon

Today we’re onto Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg, a small country in between Germany, France, and Belgium.  Unfortunately, we’re only stopping here for one night because all the hotels are quite expensive and there weren’t any suitable options for budget accommodations. Although I would have preferred a bit more time to explore Luxembourg, we managed to see a lot of the city and we got to be a spectator at the ING Europe Marathon, which was quite the event!

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