Bruges- my favorite Belgian town

First a little pronunciation lesson- I was correcting John the whole time we were there. With Bruges the "s" is silent, and the g sound is soft. Like Broozh. Not a hard g like get or go, but soft. I can't even think of a word to compare it to. Almost like "George", but softer, a little more Frenchified.

All clear now? Good.

I loved Bruges. Maybe it was the architecture, the small town feel, or maybe it was the fact that every other store was a chocolate store.

It was definitely the architecture. Ü

First things first, of course. First thing we did when we got to town was find food. Belgium is known for about 4 culinary treats. The first one, beer, isn't an option, so we are down to three. Chocolate and waffles we would save for dessert, we needed something a little more nutritious, so we went with the obvious choice- fries. Or frites. (just don't call them French fries). Add some spiced up mayo (and some chicken for me and a hot dog for John) on the side and we were good to go. Sorry, no pictures. I was too hungry to stop and snap some.

We checked out the town square,

(Don't you love how compliant John is when I want to take his picture? This has taken YEARS of training. He's finally learned it's just easier to give in and smile. Resistance is Futile.)

and headed for the huge clock tower that dominates the square. We considered paying 5 Euro each to climb the 366 stairs, but decided to wait and see how tired we were at the end of the day before embarking on that experience.

We took a lovely canal boat cruise through town, where we were crammed in a boat with 20 other people, and listened to the narration in 3 or 4 languages. Luckily one of them was English. I snapped pictures of nearly everything.

Afterwards, we shopped, walked around, and saw a beautiful Michaelangelo sculpture of the Madonna and Child.

Then, just to get a different view of the town (and rest our weary feet) we took a horse drawn carriage ride tour through the town. Both tours were lovely, but I think I preferred the horse drawn carriage.

One thing I noticed was that most of the carriage drivers were girls. At least 75% of them. I realize this is an equal opportunity world, but (and not that I have tons of experience here) but most horse drawn carriage drivers I have come across (and that includes just noticing them on the street, not actually going for a ride) have been boys. Older men, really. So here's a bunch of 20 somethings year old girls, taking tourists on rides through town. And I thought to myself, that this would be something that Madison would LOVE to do. She'd need to learn to talk louder to be heard over the clip-clop of the horses, and if she decided Bruges was the place to be, she'd need to learn several different languages. But what a fun job. (If you can handle the cleaning up the horse poop.)

Oh, and we never made it up the tower. We were totally gonna, but gosh darnit if it didn't close before we could.

Haarlem and Amsterdam

So here's my bit of tourist advice- should you ever find yourselves visiting the Netherlands, stay in Haarlem, and take the train for a day trip to Amsterdam. If you're interested in Rembrandt or Van Gogh.

Unless of course you're interested in the other two things that are the big tourist draws in Amsterdam, (but this is a family friendly blog, so I'm not gonna talk about that here)- then feel free to stay in Amsterdam, the quaint feel of Haarlem probably won't be of much interest to you anyway.

Haarlem is the cutsey touristy kind of place that I like. Small town feel, windmills, shops full of tulips, more of a "family friendly" kind of place. I really liked it.

A little over four years ago, book club was started in my neighborhood and I was really excited to be a part of it. I was pregnant with Christopher, but not due for two months. My mom was staying with us to help me stay pregnant, and we were hoping to keep the little guy in another month, so I had plenty of time to lay around and read.

I was excited to get started reading and ordered "The Hiding Place" from Amazon. I never finished it. Christopher was born sometime during chapter 2.

The book has sat on my shelf for the last 4 years. I've meant to get to it. Really, I have. I heard it's a great book, really uplifting despite the fact that it takes place during the Nazi holocaust.

So since we were visiting Haarlem, where the museum for "the hiding place" is located, I decided it was time to dust off the book and finally finish reading it. It was a really good book, btw.

In a nutshell the author, Corrie Ten Boom lived with her father and sister above their watch shop. During the German occupation in WWII, they were part of a resistance group who helped the Jews escape. They even had a "hiding place" built into the back of Corrie's room to hide any Jews in the event the house was raided and searched. She was caught (but the Jews weren't) and she and her father and sister were sent to a concentration camp. Her father and sister died before being released, but yes, it's still an uplifting story.

You can go see the house and it's hiding place when you visit Haarlem. It was pretty interesting to see first hand.

In Amsterdam we visited the Rijksmuseum (Huge collection of Rembrandt) and the Van Gogh Museum. Both famous artists from Holland.

Another impression was that bikes outnumbered cars AT LEAST 2 to 1. If you told me 10 to 1, I would not be surprised. I mentioned taking the train into town, because parking is also ridiculous and expensive. But if you have a bike, you can just chain it to anything standing still. (and they do.)

You know it's sad when your biggest tourist attraction is a statue of a monkey

I found myself wandering around the exciting town of Mons, Belgium. John once again had work in an obscure little town.

To be honest, I was NOT impressed.

So far, this was the dirtiest, run down, transient filled town we'd come across yet. We wished we would have known the job was only going to take 1/2 a day, so we could have reserved a hotel in another city. Like Bruges. (my favorite of all Belgian towns) Or more likely in Haarlem or Amsterdam (Netherlands)

I pushed back my fears of getting mugged, and headed to the local Tourist Information center, and asked them what was worth seeing in their little town.

He told me all about the monkey statue and if I put my left hand on his head, I will have good luck for a year.

He also pointed out a garden, a clock tower, and a church on my map. I hit all the big sights in an hour and that included playing sudoku on my cell phone for at least a half an hour on a bench under the clock tower. It was actually really nice and cool there in the shade.

Dinner however was the highlight of the day. John took me to this little place he knew about, where they serve you raw meat and provide you with an incredibly hot rock to cook it on. I heard about 500 degrees Celsius? I'm not sure what that is Fahrenheit, but dang hot. And you got a bunch of dipping sauces. We both ordered the shishkabob style chicken, pork, and steak. It was fun. And really yummy.

And yes, I did burn myself. (But is anybody really surprised?) My arm grazed the corner of the rock. Luckily, miraculously really, this place actually put ice in my Coke. Like three whole cubes. I was able to immediately put ice on it, and so no real harm done.

Oh, also I really like this door handle. I want one just like it.

The Rhine River

One of my little day excursions took me to the Rhine River Valley.

Back before Germany was Germany, they had little kingdoms running amok in the area. The Rhine river is lined with castles up and down the river banks to exact tolls from any merchants trying to haul their wares down the river.

The castles weren't so great for merchants back then, but excellent for modern day tourists.

On our last trip to Germany a couple of years ago, John and I drove through the area, top down on our Ford convertible, and had a lovely day. Glorious, really.

This time around, it was "nice". And by nice I mean it paled in comparison to the last time I visited the area. The view was still amazing, but this time my travel companion was off doing his job somewhere, and the weather was uncomfortably warm. (Still not AZ hot, but then again you don't see me sightseeing outside in AZ in the summer)

Since the last time we drove, this year I opted to take the river cruise through what Rick calls the "Best of the Rhine".

I parked in Bacharach and took a tour boat down to St. Goar, snapping pictures of towns and castles along the way.

When I got to St. Goar, I debated going up to the castle that we loved so much last year, but ending up deciding against it, because mostly I didn't want to diminish the memory of last time.

With John vs. being alone, gorgeous weather vs. sweat dripping down my back, a whole castle practically to ourselves vs. over crowded with tourists.

I ended up buying myself an ice-cream cone and caught the boat going back up (down?) the river to Bacharach and my car.

On the way back home I was pretty proud of myself for hitting 230 kmh. (about 140 mph) John's new record is 250 kmh.

Trier

One day after John got back from work, we picked a more interesting town not too far away and took off for the evening.

They had some cool ancient Roman baths ruins we thought we'd like to check them out.

Unfortunately they closed about the time we made it to Trier and were looking for parking. I was able to snap some shots from behind the fence.

And we wandered around for a couple of hours checking out the rest of the sights.

We even found a little store we liked. (Even though it was closed)

I miss my kids.

One thing I forgot to mention- that day was a little harder for me in particular, not because I was in a sense wasting a day in Europe, but because I missed my kids a lot that day.

Don't get me wrong, I always miss them, and they are never far from my thoughts, but some days, the feelings are just a little stronger. Or maybe I am just a little more aware of them.

Usually I have been crazy busy, tons of walking, and sightseeing, and being "Go! Go! Go!" until we collapse in bed at night, and even though I still miss them, and think about them, I don't have time to feel sad.

If that makes any sense.

And then there are moments like last Monday. After the laundry was done, (if you want to call laid out all over our room to dry "done") and I was sitting at the ice cream shoppe, eating my strawberry sundae concoction, trying not to be too obvious as I watched the little family by me. It was just a mom and two little kids trying to decide what to order. The little girl couldn't decide, they all looked too yummy. She was however, pretty interested in checking out the patio seating outside in the garden. (Several times)(It looked lovely, and I would have sat out there, except it was pretty hot out).

The kids didn't particularly remind me of my own, but just sitting there, by myself, alone with my thoughts, half a world away from my offspring, somewhere where my kids would love to be, and I really, really missed their little faces.

Another time in particular was yesterday, it was just for a moment, but John and I were in a candy store, and there was this cute, cute, cute little girl, like 4 years old with brown curly pigtails. I couldn't help but notice her. (I seem to notice a lot of the kids I come across.) Anyways, she had a paper bag with her, and every so often she would pick up a different color lollypop and show her mom, who would smile and say yes, and she would carefully drop it in her bag. She had that bag clutched so tightly in her little fist.

I must have smiled at her, or said something, because she kinda ran up to me and proudly opened her bag to show me her precious stash of lollypops. She had at least half a dozen brightly colored suckers in there. The mom tried to stop her, saying something to the effect of "no honey" like she thought that her little girl was bothering me.

In all honesty though, I was delighted.

Even if I was acutely aware that I would have liked to share a moment like that with one of my own kids.

I hope when I am old, I am like those little old ladies who bake cookies to entice the neighbor kids to come over, rather than old and crotchety and yell at them to get off my lawn.

I'll be home in a couple days, and I am ready. More than ready I think. These last two weeks have been a lot of fun (I am a week behind in posting) but I am ready to go home.

Tomorrow morning I get on a plane and head for the good 'ol U S of A. With an overnight in NYC. John and I split up from there, and he heads to Philadelphia, and I head to Salt Lake, where I am going to hug and kiss my kids until they can't stand it anymore.

Necessities.

Monday morning found me alone while John had to work. Since the town of Landstuhl held no real excitement, I opted to do laundry.

And with Rick's help, try to figure out the rest of the week's activities.

Then maybe later, I'd try to find something more exciting to do.

Doing laundry involves buying funny little tokens from the front desk for 2 Euros each. One token per load of laundry to wash, and one to dry. (8 Euros for 4 tokens)

The tokens go into a machine that regulates the amount of time the washer will work.

I noticed at the end of the cycle for my first load, I still had some time left, so I turned back the dial on the washer so I'd "get my money's worth" and give my clothes an extra rinse.

What happened was the washer filled up with water, then my time ran out. I had to use another token to finish that cycle on the washer and drain the water.

Which meant I had to throw both loads in the same dryer at the same time because I only had one token left (and too much pride to go and pay for a 5th token)

This of course meant my laundry didn't get completely dry.

Unfortunately when I got back to the room, the maids hadn't straightened up, so I hid all the damp clothes in a duffle bag and went to hide out on the roof (they had free wi-fi up there, even if the sun made it difficult to see the computer screen) until they finished.

Then I was free to spread out our underwear all over the couch and the bed and stuff.

Also, since I washed nearly everything, and it was all still wet, the only clothes I had to wear were the ones I was wearing- my pajamas. a pink Minnie Mouse t-shirt, and purple and white striped pants.

It's a good thing I didn't have big plans for the day.

When my clothes dried sufficiently, I walked down to the street and bought gelato.

The road to Lanstuhl

Sadly, our mini-"Holiday" had to come to an end, and it was time to head up to Landstuhl, Germany cause John had work to do.

What? Never heard of it? Me neither. It's not even a dot on any of my travel guide books. It's basically a little town that exists to provide off-base housing for US soldiers. Or so I've gathered anyway.

But the drive getting there was lovely.

At least in the Alpine region.

In case I haven't mentioned it, I LOVE that area.

I made John stop at the Biberweir luge. (Alpine slide) I thought I'd give the Alps one last chance to redeem themselves in that aspect. And this time they didn't disappoint. My only regret was that I didn't give the guy in front of me enough time before I took off, I had to keep slowing down as to not crash into him. There was a pretty cool hill where John and I were both like "Dude! did you catch some air on that hill?! That was awesome!"

Afterwards, I took a bunch of pictures out of the window of the car as John drove. Who knows when I will be back?

I loved the green pastures with the wildflowers and the ruggedness of the mountains in the background. Very postcard-ish.

There were all these fields with dozens (or more) little barns/sheds in them. I found these fascinating.

And guess what? The cows actually had cowbells.

With the fields and the flowers, and the mountains, and the blue skies, and the cowbells, it was almost enough to make me feel like yodeling.

Almost.

Oh, and on a random note, we stopped at a gas station for some travel munchies, (coke for me, Mezo mix for John, and we thought we'd give these a try. Near as we can tell, it's a bag of crunchy, deep fried peanut butter thingies.