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…)

First Day In Sin City

Yesterday night Paul and I sat at the reception desk after they closed the common rooms at 11 pm (another stupid policy of the hostel) because Wi-Fi doesn’t work in our room and there was nowhere else to sit when the common rooms closed.  Although the hostel makes it clear that reception isn’t 24 hours, people coming in and out kept asking us questions because they thought we worked there, which was amusing and led to a few random conversations.  Two of those people, Rosamond and Matt from Texas, ended up going out for beers with us when Paul finished work, and we ended up making Matt our travel buddy when we found out he was heading to Amsterdam today like us.  You know what they say – the more the merrier! (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 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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The Perfect End To Germany

Tonight we finished Germany in the best way possible – completely drunk with a group of random strangers!  Could there be a better way to say goodbye to the country that drinks more beer than any others?  I think not (more…)

Düsseldorf, Why Did We Bother?

Hindsight is always 20/20, and in hindsight, we should have just skipped Düsseldorf, Germany!  Paul had added it to our itinerary after reading somewhere that it was a nice city and the “fashion capital” of Germany, but neither of us found it particularly worth seeing.  The coolest thing we saw was the door knocker in the picture above and in total we only took 15 pictures today! (more…)

Miniatur Wunderland

After another unexciting travel day to get to Hamburg yesterday, we walked around the town a bit but found that, compared to Berlin, Hamburg is rather small and unexciting.  It’s a nice town and Hamburgers (that’s really what the people of Hamburg are called!) are quite friendly and helpful (the staff at the Ibis we’re staying at are by far the nicest of any Ibis we’ve been to thus far), but none of the general sights really appealed to us, so we decided to do something a bit different today and spent the day at a place called Miniature Wunderland instead of walking around sightseeing.  This turned out to be one of the coolest things we’ve done so far and if you ever travel to Germany, make sure you go to Hamburg to check out Minature Wunderland – it will amaze you!!! (more…)