More Dim Sum :)
Posted by ScarlettJun 4th, 2009 | 1 Comment
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!
Diiiimmm Suuummmm!!!
Posted by ScarlettJun 3rd, 2009 | 2 Comments
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.
I Amsterdam
Posted by ScarlettMay 31st, 2009 | No Comments
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…
First Day In Sin City
Posted by ScarlettMay 30th, 2009 | No Comments
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!
In Brugge
Posted by ScarlettMay 29th, 2009 | No Comments
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…
Comparison of Accomodations
Posted by ScarlettMay 28th, 2009 | No CommentsToday we’ve moved on to Bruges (also spelt Brugge if you go by the Dutch version), a medieval city in the northwest region of Belgium. We’re staying at a hostel called Lybeer Travellers, and my main thought is “thank God we’re only here for two nights!” Apart from the fact that we’re in a dorm room with two other guys who don’t seem to understand the common courtesy of coming and going quietly when you’re staying in a dorm room, the hostel itself is in bad need of repair and the bathrooms are horrendous. I tried taking a shower and the water went from freezing cold to scorching hot every five minutes so I had keep waiting for that brief moment when the water would start changing temperatures to splash myself with a bit of normal temperature water! It was not a fun experience…
Some New Friends & Le Fin de Siecle Again!
Posted by ScarlettMay 26th, 2009 | No Comments
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 
More Good Food & Beer
Posted by ScarlettMay 25th, 2009 | No Comments
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…
The Best Food So Far!
Posted by ScarlettMay 24th, 2009 | No Comments
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!
The ING Marathon
Posted by ScarlettMay 23rd, 2009 | No Comments
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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