Category: Europe, 2019

We didn’t have much of a plan today other than to find the Michelangelo statue Madonna and Child. It seems silly not to check out a Michelangelo if you have the chance.

It was a nice statue. I’m more of a fan of Bernini sculptures but this was lovely with a nice story.

While I liked the Michelangelo I enjoyed some of the other artwork in this cathedral more. I’ve always been fascinated by skulls and skeletons in churches. Probably because this is an unusual image in US churches.

The choir was beautifully carved.

The confessionals were also nicely carved.

The above confessional was neat. I think the angel on the left represents being burdened with sin and the one on the right is set free by confessing her sins. At least that’s how it reads for me…

The two tombs above are of Mary of Burgundy and her father Charles the Bold. The tombs are placed just in front of the high alter so they must have been important. Or rich. Their story is actually pretty interesting (they effected world politics pretty intensely) but I don’t want to fill my blog with history. Google it.

The pulpit was lively as well. The whole thing looks like it rests on the human figure at the bottom.

Our second church of the day was St. Saviors. It wasn’t as spectacular as the first but there were some neat things.

Enough with the churches. It was likely going to start raining around 2pm and so we decided to do a canal boat tour while the weather held. This was an amazing 1/2 an hour on the water in one of these…

Most boats we saw were packed though they look more crowded than they feel, and we had a couple of empty seats right next to us. The guide was a retired Englishman with a style of narration that gave you a since he really loved this city and didn’t have a care in the world other than to enjoy it.

As you can see below this city is just as photogenic from the water as it is from land.

Time for a waffle and coffee. We went back to the same waffle place since the waffles were great and the server was cute. They don’t use batter like we do, they use a yeast dough.

We ate our waffle in The Markt and looked at the courtyard of the belfry then grabbed a couple of chocolates and headed back the the hotel for a nap.

We had a hard time waking up from our nap. The lack of sleep and time change caught up to us a bit, Mike especially. We thought maybe we’d walk a block to a little restaurant around the corner, grab a quick bite and go back to bed. We’d sept through a little rains storm and was expecting more but then the sky cleared up completely so we ventured out into a part of town we hadn’t yet seen.

This area had no tourists so we had it to ourselves with the exception of a local or two. We found a sign that said it was St. Anna’s district.

We could see on our little tourist map we were pretty close to one of the windmills that circle the town along the moat.

We walked quite a bit and the wind was making it chilly. Fortunately I’d purchased a nice linen scarf hand woven by this master weaver from Latvia.

The amount of linen thread he has on the loom can make around 9 scarves. He changes the placement of the thread for each scarf to make a different design. He and his wife live in Bruges for five months selling their scarves the go home to Latvia during the winter and make more to sell. They are quite the craftspeople.

This kept me warm as we headed down the main street back to our neighborhood and to this restaurant just behind our hotel.

I had penne pasta with a pesto sun-dried tomato sauce with prosciutto. Mike had a yummy beef stew. And frites. With Mayo. (I think he’s hooked.)

The food was good and the atmosphere fun and friendly. A little neighborhood restaurant not really catering to just the tourists.

Back to the hotel to pack up. We have an early train to Brussels where we grab our train to Cologne, Germany.

Our train to Bruges connected through Antwerp. The station there had trains on four levels and the station was beautiful.

We grabbed a yummy sandwich to split (the last healthy food choice of the day) and hopped on the next train headed to Bruges. The countryside was beautiful but we’d both hit a jetlaggy wall and had a hard time staying awake to enjoy it.

We arrived in Bruges and taxied to our hotel, Hotel Boteniek.

The above is the last photo of the day for me taken around 9:45pm local. This place is so incredibly beautiful and photogenic. We were snapping shots all day long.

Before we went camera crazy we checked into our room and took a needed hour long nap.

The room has tall ceilings and a slightly worn feeling but the bed it big and comfy and the window set above a quiet little off the beat and path lane lets in a nice breeze.

Awake and in need of coffee and chocolate (when in Belgium…) we began the hunt. The first little chocolate shop we hit had some lovely treats. Sometimes I forget that I don’t like marzipan. My first little chocolate was a piece of marzipan coated with chocolate. It was…ok.

After our little piece of chocolate we just happened to run into a waffle place we’d read about.

They had coffee and so I had a cup and a plain waffle.

The waffle coffee combo was cathartic. And just 4 euro!

We began our stroll to The Markt, the sort of main square in Bruges.

If you’ve seen the movie “In Bruges” this it the tower that one of the assassins fall from. Oh…spoiler alert…

Despite the touristy Burger King everything is just gloriously medieval in this square.

We were stunned by the beauty and detail all around us. Perhaps it was just waffle afterglow but I think this city is just stunning.

We began to roam aimlessly using the big spires of various churches to pull us from one part of town the the next.

From around 6pm to 8:30pm this is what we did. Stroll around with our jaw dropping every corner we turned and snapping pictures to share with you.

We decided we’d like to go back to The Markt since the light was getting really nice for pictures…more pictures.

Notice in the image above the two green carts. one on either side of the model tower. They sell Frites. Someone, I can’t remember now if it was Mike or me but one of us suggested we have Frites for dinner. (Exaggerated stage whisper: it was me.)

I couldn’t decide which picture of these to use so I included them all. Vote for your favorite now.

Yes, that is a big dollop of Mayo on top. Not as gross as it sounds. (Rob Rough probably threw up a little just looking at these photos. He haaaaates Mayo.)

They were tasty. Perhaps the best fries I’ve ever had. The Mayo was interesting. I ordered a “small” and finished maybe 1/2 with most of the Mayo scraped to the side.

We decided it was time to head back to the hotel so we strolled in that direction snapping a few more pictures along the way.

We saw a little green area beyond the street where our hotel is and decided to explore. It was a beautiful park called Koningin Astridpark. We decided to stroll through since us was just so lovely.

Plus we’d eaten a lot of crap so we could probably use the extra steps.

Now we are back in the room and writing our blogs. It’s not a competition but I really hope Darryl likes mine best…

I leave you with a cool bench, a provocative fountain and loaves of marzipan that looks like deli meat.

One hell of a thunderstorm came ripping through Amsterdam last night. Non-stop lightning, hail and wind gusts up to 50-75kmph. (I’ll post a video of the lightning on Facebook.) The storm at least made the jet laggy night’s sleep entertaining. We both woke up around 10:45 local time thinking we’d slept for 4-5 hours when in reality it had been around 2 hours. Still we managed to sleep on and off until around 5am local. And by that time the storm had passed, leaving a bit of damage behind.

We decided to grab an early bite at the hotel. Decent buffet. Breads, eggs, sausages, etc and an espresso machine. With our train leaving for Bruges at 12:15pm so we had a few hours left in Amsterdam. We decided to take a canal tour on a long canal boat.

What a wonderful way to see part of the city center in an hour.

Houseboats were all over the canals. Some of them were really neat looking.

Below are the Dancing Ladies. These are leaning buildings that look as if they are dancing. Zoom in to see how crooked they are. The likings they are built on are rotting and that’s why the lean.

The canal cruise was great. Hitting it early enough to where there were only around 16-18 people aboard (we’ve been seeing the canal boats leave packed from the dock the day before with 50-60 people) was good timing. With only a couple of hours before our train we went hunting for Stroopwafels, a wafer like cookie and an Amsterdam specialty. We found some in a cheese shop where we sampled (And purchased) some yummy cheeses.

We headed to the room for a quick nap before heading off to the train station.

Day two is really the continuation of day one since we left California on 6/4 and got to Amsterdam on June 5th. We made it through customs and jumped a train to Amsterdam Centraal train station. A lovely station.

Since we are here less than 24 hours we figured a place close to the station would work best. Mike and I decided if we were to stay a few days here we’d find a place away from the hustle of this place but it works fine for us. Typical small European hotel room. Functional. Not a bad view!

My ATM Card wasn’t working so after a call to my bank and a quick shower at the hotel we headed out to hunt for an ATM and a cafe so I could get an espresso. We found a cafe one along this alleyway that was full of head shops.

I had a yummy little walnut tart and a macchiato.

We had tickets for the Van Gogh Museum at 4pm so we decided to catch the tram over a bit early and wonder around. There’s a beautiful park behind the museum that we walked around.

The Van Gogh Museum is in the distance.

We stumbled upon the United States Embassy.

Quite a bit of security compared to the other embassies on the block.

The Rijksmuseum was close by. I’m not a big fan of Rembrandt and our time is limited and did I mention we’ve only had 2 or so hours of sleep…? See how tired we are?

So we got into the Van Gogh museum a bit earlier than or reserved time and really enjoyed it.

Mike loves the Sunflower painting (it was powerful.)I really liked The Potato Eaters. And The Cottage (aka The Nest.)

Both are earlier Van Gogh’s before he got all Starry Night. (Which I love.) There were far fewer paintings in his final style than I thought there would be but plenty to satisfy.

Jet leg was beginning to catch up so we took the tram back to our hotel and look for a place to grab a quick bite. We decided to head toward a pretty church and look around there. I couldn’t resist going inside St. Nickolaas.

We found a little Indonesian place for a quick dinner. They had me at shadow puppets. A yummy chicken with peanut sauce later and we are back in the room trying to stay awake a couple of more hours to help with the jet lag.

By the way, Amsterdam is really cute and though we thought it might rain all day long we had no rain except for when we walked from the train station to the hotel.

Mike is asleep at 7:30pm. Not bad. I’m going to try and stay up for a bit longer…maybe.

We started by finishing our prepping of the House for our friend Rachel who is staying with our dog while we’re away. The dog, Lainey, seemed to know we were heading out and threw a fit as we were loading the suitcases in the car. Lots of whining and scratching at the door, which is unusual for her! She calmed down a bit when we finally left though the nanny cam showed her laying by the front door. 😦

She sure has been cuddly the last several days. I’m really going to miss her.

We made to SFO (SAN Francisco Airport), breezed through security (thank you TSA Pre!) and hightailed it to the new Polaris Lounge.

Free restaurant with some yummy food in addition to the buffet. We both opted for the burger.

Not bad! And the price is right…

Our flight begins to board in an hour and 1/2. In the mean time we chill in the lounge.

Our flight was pretty smooth after an hour delay at the gate waiting for maintenance to fix a toilet. I managed to fall asleep a couple of times, once so deep I didn’t wake up when mike was poking me to see if I wanted the breakfast they served.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 11am.

All and all a good travel day!