Belgium & The Netherlands

Amsterdam, Delft Netherlands & Bruges Belgium:  27-30 October 2016

Bruges

Delft

Amsterdam

Bruges, Belgium

Carli pumped for the weekend in her sleeper leaving Vienna. We had the compartment to ourselves, and a long train ride ahead of us. The night train took us all the way to Frankfurt.

We were well rested and energized for the day thanks to our train sleep. A quick stop over in the Brussels train station on our way to Bruges. We decided to go to Bruges rather than Brussels with the limited time we had because photos and other's impressions of Bruges seemed more like our thing. 

Northern Europe is the Bicycle capitol of the world. 

Made it to Bruges!

   We made a beeline straight for the central square as we were most excited to see these buildings! 

Carli decided enough was enough and it was time to get down to business. Next stop, the Belgian chocolate museum. 

More important than trying the chocolate in my book was trying the Belgian waffles!

...And the French Fries. Which should actually be called Belgian Fries, because they were invented in Belgium. Our diet in Bruges consisted of chocolate, french fries, and waffles.

Bruges calls themselves the Venice of the north, and though there are no gondolas as in Venice, they do have boat tours of the canals. 

Our captain had a sense of humor that you would expect from a sailor.

French Fries with Andalouse sauce. If you like fry sauce, you would love this sauce! It's like frysauce on steroids.

At the train station in the evening to catch our train to Amsterdam where we would stay the night. Had to get one more Belgian waffle!.. or two.

Amsterdam

We had a crazy week in Vienna while trying to plan our weekend, and had trouble finding a hotel. Carli's parents were so incredibly kind and booked us a room at the Marriott in Amsterdam with their points. Thank you so much! They had this little desert plate waiting for us in their room with a note. A great way to end a busy day.

In the morning, we made our way into the city center and found a little breakfast joint. 

I have to say that I am so proud of Carli! She has become an expert at using maps, and navigating new and foreign places! This weekend's trip was really the turning point when something just clicked with her and knowing directions. 

I surprised Carli with a heart shaped stroopwafel, while she was off looking at things in the shop. 

Amsterdam's famous flower market, which wasn't really that impressive to us. I guess we just don't appreciate flowers enough. 

If anyone has seen the movie "The Best Two Years", you will recognize this little haring shack and the significance of us trying the raw fish with our fingers.

It was disgusting.

This, on the other hand, was not disgusting! There is a chain of Henri Willig cheese shops throughout the Netherlands, and they have sample plates of all their cheeses in every store. Lucky for us we had a city map that marked every one of their stores, so after discovering the first one and loving their cheese, we worked the rest of their locations into our walk around the city so we could go into every store and sample all of the cheeses multiple times. 

In "The Best Two Years", this square is where they hand out all the copies of the Book of Mormon, and contact the Bishop's daughter.

One of Amsterdam's claims to fame is the Ann Frank House, and it is a very popular destination. It is hard to get tickets, especially for us, as we don't want to have time constraints while we're out and about. The standby line to get in was a few hours long, so we just walked past and got a picture of the door.

Mid-Afternoon we decided to go to Delft, and after getting back we found the FEBO takeout restaurant which is awesome!

FEBO is a fast food place that is like a vending machine. Each window is a little compartment, and you just pile your coins in at the top of the column you want and open the compartment with the snack that looks the best to you. Pretty ingenious for the Marijuana capitol of Europe. 

Delft, Netherlands

Our impressions of Amsterdam were not very good. Besides the awesome cheese shops, and Best Two Years references, the city is very dirty, packed with people, and full of marijuana and prostitutes. By early afternoon, we decided we needed a change and went back to the train station to catch a train to the small town of Delft which was about an hour away from Amsterdam. 

Delft was much more our style. Fewer people, fewer tourists, no prostitutes, and a Windmill! They even still had Henri Willig cheese shops!

Ran into this little library in an ally. There was a sign saying to take and leave books as you wished.

Stroopwafels are sent from heaven! On our way to the train station leaving Delft, we passed a closing stroopwafel stand. We hoped to get some since they were about to throw them away anyway. Lucky for us, not only did they let us get some, but they let us have them for 50 Euro cents each instead of 2 Euros each. They were GIANT and such a great way to end the day! 

Cheese!
We made our way back to Amsterdam in time to grab something to eat at FEBO and catch our train out of there.

These are the faces of a successful weekend! In the end, Bruges, Belgium was our favorite. Again, we were all alone in our compartment. We really have the best luck.

Our night train brought us all the way to Munich, and from there we caught an Austrian Railjet train back to Vienna to get home in time for church. Lucky for us, Vienna has a 1pm ward.