Europe top ten

So I decided to write a post about all the little fun, weird, and different things about Europe.  Here are my top ten interesting things about Europe:

10- Toilets:  The toilets in Europe are just...different.  Most of the time you have to push a button to flush.  Sometimes there are two buttons, one small for, well, small flushes, and one big for, well, you know.  Some toilets had levers, but not like ours in America.  It is very hard to find toilets, sometimes, as proprietors of shops and restaurants only want to let paying customers use theirs.  The seats are also all very small.  Enough said.

You can't see the buttons to push on the top of the tank.

The grey thing on the back wall is the push button.

9- Showers:  Most hotels where we stayed did not use any kind of shower curtain or fully enclosed shower.  The one in Amsterdam did have a shower curtain, but there was no way to keep the water from going all over the floor because there was no separation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom!  Most places had a little half wall made of glass that could be swung out to clean the tub.  As you can imagine, if not sealed properly, water all over the floor again.  One shower in France was impossible to figure out how to work.  I just had to take a standing bath, splashing the water on myself from the faucet.

Our shower in Amsterdam.  There is no difference between the shower floor and bathroom floor.

Our shower in Reims.  Notice the floor is the same in the shower as the rest.  And yes, water was everywhere.  Also notice the toilet buttons, one big and one little.

8-  Breakfast:  Breakfast is a different experience.  Half of the hotels included it, half you had to pay something ridiculous like 12 Euros or more.  There was usually a basket of many types of breads, sliced cheese, sliced meats, muesli or flakes for cereal, scrambled eggs that looked like they had been pushed through a sieve, sweet rolls, and soft boiled eggs.  There was always coffee and most people looked at me like I was crazy when I didn't want any.  At the hotel in Reims, France, there was this contraption to boil your eggs, but I couldn't get it to boil enough.

Beans, for breakfast?  Seriously, Scott!

7- Transportation:  Trains, trains, trains.  We rode a lot of trains.  Some had easy, straight routes.  Others, we had to run to transfer to another train.  The trains in the Netherlands were by far the nicest.  They were newer and cleaner.  They also had a lot of double decker trains, so we always went up top for the view.  They also offered free wireless internet.  The Eurostar train to London through the channel tunnel was cool, but crowded.  A few times on trains, Scott and I couldn't sit together because they were so full. 
In England, driving on the left side of the road is crazy.  I was so confused when using traffic circles and turning, I was glad Scott drove.

Watch the signs to make sure you're on the right platform!

I'm on a train.  The top of a double decker.

6-  Traffic circles:  Oh...my...gosh...so many traffic circles, especially in France.  Scott would whip through them so quickly, I was carsick most of the time.  You would go through one traffic circle, go 10 feet, and hit another one, and another, and another like that.  It was traffic circle overkill.

Not a traffic circle, but we went through them too fast for me to get a picture!

5-  Health and safety:  You gotta hand it to those British folks, they are very concerned about our safety and health.  We constantly heard reminders about how this wasn't safe or that wasn't complaint with health and safety rules during our many tours of historic buildings.  Even the elevators were politely reminding us to be safe and mind the doors.  Oh, and they told us, "going up" or "going down."  As if we didn't already know, lol, silly elevators.

4-  Paying for stuff:  First of all, if you plan on going to Europe anytime soon, make sure you have at least one card with the chip thingy in it and find out your pin number.  Apparently that is how most of Europe is paying for stuff now, not swiping cards.  Also, they are very good about not taking your card to swipe it.  They have you do it, or if you are at dinner someplace, they bring this handheld device where they swipe it at your table.  It prints out the receipt, you sign a copy, and voila, you're done!  Tipping is not expected in Europe because they pay their waiters a living wage.

3-  Windmills:  Amsterdam and Belgium were full of them.  France and England had some, too.  It's a great idea, clean energy.  Plus, they were always put up on farmland or grazing meadows to make good use of the space.  Sometimes, there were as many as 30 as far as you could see stretching over the fields and hills.  I wish it would catch on more here in the US. 

An old school windmill.  Not too many left these days, sadly.

New school windmills, cool!

2-  Food:  It was fun to taste all of the different foods of the different regions.  But it was also fun to walk into a store and see the different candies, chocolates, and chips, similar to us but also very different.  And let me tell you, orange Fanta in Europe is sooooo much better than in America.  They use real juice and carbonate it, not like the regular old syrupy stuff they use here.  People drink a lot of beer and wine over there.  It wasn't unusual to see people drinking wine at lunch.  We even saw some men getting beers at breakfast in Stratford upon Avon!

Oliebollen in Sneek, The Netherlands

A Belgian Waffle in Belgium, of course!

Salad and kasespatzle in the Alsace Region of France.

Fish and chips in Edinburgh, Scotland.

1-  Fashion:  Scarves, everyone wore them, even men and little kids.  And I'm not talking the practical warm woolen scarves for winter.  Also, skinny jeans.  Everyone, even old people, were wearing them.  My jeans were too long, so I had to roll them up because they were dragging on the ground and getting wet.  I'm sure I stuck out like a sore thumb.  Some women wore leggings or skirts.  A lot of women wore boots. 

Me sporting my stylish and warm scarf.

There you have it.  There were so many other cool things about Europe but I can't think of every thing right now.  One thing I did come away with is the awesome sense of how old and ancient everything is.  We here in America go into an old 1800s house and think, wow, that's old.  Look at that old bed, look at that old picture.  But in Europe, you walk into an old castle and you can't even fathom the generations of people that lived there, gazed upon it's walls, and even visited the places as tourist sights in the 1800s when our old buildings were being built.  I think that's why I love going there so much!

Spiral staircases, everywhere we went, seriously.  I think the Europeans like going in circles.