Belgium & Holland

From Paris we went to our last destination: Brugge, Belgium. We wanted our last stop to be a quiet place for us to relax before we made our journey home. Brugge definitely was that quiet, relaxing place, but we didn't really take the time to relax. There was just too much to see! We stayed at Andre's B&B (which was AWESOME and if you ever stay in Brugge you must stay with Andre) and Andre lent us his bikes to ride into town and we felt just like one of the locals. Brugge is beautiful and magical and we really loved it. Everything also shuts down at 6pm, so there isn't much you can do in the evenings there.

Our next day in Brugge was spent walking around the market (Saturday is there market day), going to the chocolate factory (Belgian chocolate is divine), finding windmills, wandering, looking at ancient drawbridges, wandering, and getting a real feel of the lovely city.

We wanted to see what Ghent and Brussels were all about, so we spent our third day wandering around those cities. Ghent is straight out of the middle ages. It was beautiful and almost overwhelming because there were so many huge, old buildings EVERYWHERE! We went to Brussels for a little bit, but we were cold and tired and eager to get back to the B&B to relax. We did get to see the "little boy peeing" fountain... not something you'd think they would want to be famous for, but whatever.

Our last day in Belgium we actually spent in Holland. We decided it was worth it to take the four hour train ride to Amsterdam to check the city out. I was expecting it to be like the ghetto part of Vegas with people passed out everywhere and people shooting up on the streets. There was no such thing going on. There were quite a few "coffee shops", but Amsterdam was a beautiful city full of some very interesting history. We took a four hour tour of the city and got taken through the red light district and got the history of that area (actually quite interesting, although the women in the windows looked like they got beat pretty hard with the ugly/fatty stick), got educated on "coffee shops", learned how the city was founded/created, learned why the houses are tilted, saw some interesting historical sights, and saw Anne Frank's house. Our tour actually ended here and it was super awesome to see the things that she did and see the church that she heard from their hiding place. Very neat. We were freezing at the end of our tour, so we called it a day and spent the rest of the night enjoying our warm room and packing.

The next day was spent traveling to Frankfurt to catch our plane the next day. We have loved our adventures in Europe and it has made us realize how big the world is and how much more we have left to see!!!