Route du vin, the Alsace Region of France-October 30

This morning we woke up from a good nights sleep, got ready, and had le petit  dejuner.  I had croissants, cheese, and hot chocolate.  Scott had fun tasting all of the different breads available.  We then headed out to the first little town on the route de vin on our agenda, Eguisheim.  I loved this little village.  We picked up a little guided and follwed a suggested path through the village streets.  The buildings were almost all wattle and daub and were painted pretty pastel colors with wood timbers.  Most of the buildings were dated from the early 1200s.  The city was built in a curcular pattern with the houses on the outside forming the outer walls and houses on the inside forming concentric rings.  Some of the houses had phrases painted above and below the windows that were prayers for God's protection, names and dates, and even one house telling nosey people to pass on!  This is the town where the Alsace region's only pope was born, so there is a chateau and chapel in his honor.  We noticed the chateau had a large nest of large long beaked birds on the top of the spires.  We learned later that they were storks, the bird of the region.

        The pigeon house...used as a chicken coop.

        Too much cuteness!

               A window with a message.

                   The message translated (the middle one).

The next town was Kayersberg.  This ancient town sits next to a hill with a castle ruin.  We walked around, got a couple of pretzels, and after unsuccessfully making it to the castle ruin, we left for the next town.  

Next was Riquewiher, a very popular tourist destination.  This town was also cute and full of waddle and daub houses.  We had lunch at a restaurant called La Grenouil (the frog) and ate outside.  Scott had chicken and spatzel (since we are so close to Germany, the territory has gone back and forth for centuries.  The food is heavily influenced by both cultures.)  I had spazel avec fromage et salade.  It was delicious!  

          More cuteness. 

             Yumminess!

After walking around and exploring some more, we left to go see Chateau Haut-Koenigsburg.  This castle had been around since at least 800 and was renovated several times.  By the early 1900s, it was a castle ruin.  But at the time, Germany owned this area, so the King Wilhiem commissioned an architect to rebuild the castle.  So they spent about 8 years researching and rebuilding it as authentically as possible.  It was really well done.  The castle sits on top of a mountain in the Black Forest overlooking the valley of the route de vin.  We really enjoyed exploring this castle.

            After walking up a very steep hill, this is the view of the castle. 

           An interior spiral staircase. 

         The view from inside the castle. Breathtaking!

By the way, the countryside here is a patchwork of beautiful yellows, golds, oranges, and greens.  There are vinyards on every square inch of open land.  The valley is so flat you can see for miles and it seems like there are tiny villages every couple of miles.  

        This picture can't capture the beauty of our surroundings, but I tried anyway!

After the castle, we drove to Strasbourg and saw the cathedral.  We were too late to climb up into the spire (I wasn't too sad about that) and also missed the last boat tour on the Ill river.  So we had dinner at an Alsacian restaurant.  Scott had escargot, sourkraut and sausages, and rhubarb tart for dessert.  I had a salad, onion tart, chicken leg and spatzel, and gingerbread flavored creme brulee.  I thought I was going to pop!  Apparently tarts and quiches are the thing to eat here!  

We drove back to Colmar, tired and full of great memories of the day.

         Strasbourg at night.

    The super cool and complicated astrological clock in the cathedral.

Brugge to the rescue-October 27

We're in Brugge, Brussels.  So after such a bad day yesterday, we could only get better.  And although the weather was wackydoodle and was rainy, windy, sunny, cold, windy, rainy, sunny, and rainy, we had fun.  We checked out of our hotel and shared a cab with a couple of American men to the train station.  We put our bags in a locker and went into town to make the most of the day.  It was rainy when we went out to catch a bus.  It stopped by the time we got to the Market Square.  This city is amazing, old, and beautiful.  Chocolate shops are everywhere you turn, buildings are from the 1300s and on, cobblestone streets, and tourists everywhere.  The first thing we did was get breakfast at a bakery.  I had a croissant and a slice of gouda cheese.  Scott had a sweet roll.  When I ordered the cheese, I asked in English if I could get a slice because I didn't know how to say slice in French.  But the rest I ordered in French.  The baker laughed at how I "broke out" in French in the middle of my order.  After eating our breakfast, we followed Rick Steves' advice and went to the Bell Tower.  

                           We climbed to the top of that thing!

I'm glad we went first because the crowds came soon after us and the line was a mile long.  They can only let about 70 people up at a time because it is a small area.  We climbed up, and up, and up, and up.  366 steps to be exact.  On a tiny, narrow staircase.  With the wind blowing furiously.  It was quite scary.  I didn't find out till later that it is tilting 4 feet and has been since te 1600s, but they have been monitoring it since then and it hasn't moved more.  We got to see and hear the bells chiming and how it all worked.  At the tippy top, it was an amazing view of the city, but oh my gosh was it windy!  The Bell Tower was originally built in the early 1200s and was added on to every few hundred years until it was as tall as it was.

     At this point I started telling Scott I was too scared to go on.  But I did.  Scott told me later he had flashbacks to my freaking out on the Eiffel Tower.  But I didn't freak out this time. :)

                         The amazing view that made it all worth the fear, cold, and wind.

After the tower, we went souvenir shopping and got a Belgian waffle to share.  It was soooo good!  

Then we went to take a canal boat ride.  Their boats didn't have covers and almost as soon as we got in, it started downpouring again.  We were trying to huddle under one umbrella (I forgot mine at the train station) and the seat next to me was so wet that when the boat moved, all of the water ran into my leg.  By the time I got off, my pants were drenched.  But Scott was pretty dry.  Yep, the things I do for my man. :)

                                                     You can't tell, but we're on a boat.

     Ducking under a particularly low bridge...the guide told us he loses a few tourists every year to the tunnel, but I didn't believe him.

The canal tour was pretty cool and we got to see  parts of the city we wouldn't have otherwise seen.  The rain was crazy, coming off and on like a sprinkler.  

We went into a little place to get lunch and dry off.  Then we went to go take the Halve Moon Brewery tour.  We had just missed the last tour so we had to wait an hour.  So we went to the Church of Our Lady and saw an original Michelangelo sculpture.  

It was a beautiful church but we couldn't see much because they were renovating.  We also stopped in a chocolate shop that was newly opened this weekend and the owner was so cute.  Her chocolate was A-mazing, so of course we bought some.  

Finally it was time for the beer tour.  It was one of the more interesting tours we had been on since they showed us all of the old beer brewing stuff.  This brewery had been around since the mid 1800s and was the only one to survive WWII.  

                                                                      Old beer stuff.

After the tour, we caught the train to Brussels and checked into our hotel.  We went  and saw the "Pissing Boy" which is a statue/water fountain of a boy, well, going to the bathroom.  It apparently is the "symbol" of the city, their refusal to be too serious and enjoy the funny things in life.  

We also went to the Grand Place, which is a market type square with very old buildings.  Because it was already dark, the buildings were lit up beautifully.  

We ate dinner at "La Chaloupe D'Or" which means "The Golden Boat."  Scott had mussels and I had steak.  

Overall, it was a good day.

A bad travel day- October 26

Today started out well.  We left early enough to be on the first train. Then we had to get off the train at Heerenven to ride the bus to Steenwijk because they were working on the rails.  That wasn't so bad, very organized and a nice charter bus.  Then we got on the train to Meppen and there we had to get off because someone had been hit by a train between Meppen and Zwolle.  Apparently it was becoming a common occurance.  Now, I am very sorry that someone was hurt by the train, and I hope and pray that they were ok and not killed.  So the complaining coming is not without respect for the person injured.  But it was a really bad day from this point.  They told us that the earliest the trains would be back up and running was 1:30.  They began bussing people.  But it was chaotic.  There were only 3 or 4 busses at first and a thousand people in the parking lot.  It was unorganized craziness.  Every time a bus pulled up, the masses of people shoved their way to get on board.  We stood there for almost 2 hours and finally we went to get some lunch and take a break from the craziness.  Then we went back to see if we could get on a bus.  By then the crowd was down to a few hundred.  We were finally to the spot where we could get on a bus and a train police man was finally directing people.  We were about to get on the bus and the police man said "this is the last bus."  This was almost 3 hours being stuck there.  We were able to get on but I was almost in tears from the whole thing.  We made it to Zwolle and ran to catch the train to Rotterdam, but almost as soon as we got there, it was cancelled.  We had to wait another half hour for a different train.  At this point, we had given up on getting to see any of Brugge and were just hoping we could catch a taxi to our hotel before they quit coming to the train station.  We finally made it to Rotterdam and got our tickets to Brugge.  That took another couple of hours and lots of train stops and transfers because we had missed the last high speed train.  When we arrived at the train station, we were able to get a taxi, went straight to the hotel, and went to bed.  What a frustrating day!

Sneek-October 25

This morning we took our time getting up and ready.  It was about a quarter till 10 when we finally went downstairs.  For breakfast, they had some Special K.  There were two jugs of milk, all written in Dutch of course.  I asked Scott which one he thought was skim milk and he told me I definitely wanted the one with the red cap.  So I poured it onto my cereal.  I chose....poorly.  It was nasty, bitter milk. Apparently, buttermilk.  Poo!

After breakfast, we walked to the Sheepvaart Museum (Maritime Museum).  It was a pretty cool museum, with a lot about the shipping history of Sneek and general history of the area.  There was a whole room dedicated to skutsjes, which is the type of boat Scott's great grandfather and great great grandfather sailed on up and down the Frisian waterways, and also the type of boat Scott's grandfather was born on.  They were called "roof boats" because there was a tiny cabin on the roof where the family lived.  There was a replica of one of these cabins in the museum.  As many as 8 people would live in there.

We also learned that when babies were born on the boats, they went to the nearest town and registered the birth, that's why Scott's grandfather is listed as born in Lemmer.  Children growing up on the boats went to school in a separate room just for these kids, so when the boats stopped in towns up and down the waterways, the kids stopped in for school. We learned that the picture of Scott's grandfather with his classmates is not in Sneek, and was most likely a small town along the waterways.  There was a skutsje outside of the museum, too.  All of it was very neat!

                                                Scott in front of a skutsje.  The green part was the cabin.

After the museum, we walked around exploring and took pictures of the waterpoort.  

     The waterpoort- the last standing of 4 orignial waterpoorts.

We had lunch at this fast food place across from our hotel.  Scott went to order my lunch and accidentally ordered two chicken sandwiches because he held up his index finger while ordering, which means 1 in America, but two in Europe.  He forgot to hold up his thumb.  

After lunch, we went to the library and below is an archives section where the Sneek historical society was busily working.  When I showed them the pictures of Scott's grandfather and other documents I had, they got so excited.  One little old man pulled out his magnifying glass, trying to see the documents on my Iphone.  It was hilarious and fun to watch how excited they all got.  One of them kept pushing buttons on my phone trying to see more and messing it up.  Unfortunately there wasn't enough time for them to do any research, but I got their card and they told me to email them with my info and they'd try to look up information for me.  

After this, we walked all the way back over to the train station to see the National Modelspoor museum (train museum).  It was full of model trains, of course, and was a kid's dream.  

On the way back, we stopped at a bakery truck on the side of the road that was selling all kinds of fried dough treats.  We got two oliebollen, which Scott said could be the treat his dad used to enjoy from his mom's kitchen growing up.  It was yummy, like a fried dough ball you'd get at the fair or a doughnut.  

We still had a lot of time left before dinner, but we had pretty much done everything there was to do, so we went back to the hotel to rest.  Very rare on these kinds of trips!  

Tomorrow is a long day of traveling again.  We have to ride the trains for about 5 hours with 4 stops again to our next destination.  We must start early!

Haarlem to Sneek- October 24

Today was another long day of sightseeing and traveling.  We started out our day with breakfast at our cute hotel.  We then packed everything up and walked to the train station.  My sister would be proud, we are walking everywhere we go, only using trains to get from city to city.  

Ready to face the day with my trusty backpack..

Anyway, it was a short 20 minute ride to Haarlem on the oldest train rail in The Netherlands.  I only saw one old fashioned windmill, though.  

Haarlem was a surprisingly metropolitan town.  Right next door to the Corrie ten Boom house is an H&M.  We only had to wait aout 20 minutes for the English tour.  All of the people in our group were American girls.  The tour was very interesting, the tour guide drew me in with te hstory of Corrie ten Boom and her family.  We saw the hiding place, Corrie's room was teeny  tiny. It is amazing that 6 people were able to hide in that tiny wall space for so long.  This tour was definitely one of my favorite places so far.  

After the museum tour, we looked for a place to eat lunch.  Unfortunately Roger's favorite sandwich shop was no longer there.  Instead, there was a "Sassy boy" store.  Sorry Roger!  We found another place instead, which wasn't my favorite but Scott liked it.  

The rest of the day we spent traveling to Sneek.  I think we had 4 train changes, it was crazy.  We had to run to catch one of the trains, the time between was so short.  Thank goodness for our backpack luggage!  

All told, it took us about 5 hours.  When we got here, we still had to walk to our hotel.  When we walked in, we must've looked a sight because the guy at the counter looked surprised at me and Scott knocked a bunch of hangers off of a rack with his backpack.  That was hilarious!  

Our hotel is located in/over a restaurant.  So we ate a nice dinner downstairs.  During dinner, I asked the waitress to look at the picture of Roger's dad in front of his school.  She told us that there used to be 4 waterports but 3 of them were destroyed in WWII.  So, it could have been any of them.  She suggested we go to the library, where they have archives and can possibly help us.  So exciting!

Walking day- October 23

This morning we woke up around 8:30.  We got ready and had breakfast downstairs.  We met the owner of the hotel, he told us that the hotel was originally built by a wealthy merchant who traded his goods using his boat which he moored on the canal outside of the building.  It came into the owner's family in the early 1900s and has been a hotel ever since.

 We had croissants, cheese, and soft boiled eggs for breakfast.

The breakfast room. 

So today was nothing but walking.  Ok, we did sightsee and go to museums and stuff, but we literally walked from one end of the city to the next to the next.  We walked 5.9 miles not including all the walking we did in the museums.  No wonder my feet hurt!

Anyway, the Scheepvaart Musuem was our first stop.  It is a maritime museum and it is super cool.  There are interactive displays, a replica Dutch East Indies trading ship (The Amsterdam) to climb on board and explore, and interesting artifacts from old Dutch ships.  We spent most of the morning and a little after lunch there.

The Sceepvaart museum

The Amsterdam- replica East Indies trading ship

What's for lunch?

Scott takes after his great grandfather, a skipper.

The crew's bathroom. Yep. At the back of the boat, thankfully. 

After that, we went to the Dutch Resistance museum.  It was very interesting to see what the Dutch went through during WW11.   It was also quite sad.  

After that, we went to the Heineken experience.  It was  a lot different than the last time we went, a lot more to see and  do.  It was fun, but we were a little sad that they got rid of the beautiful tasting bar.  

For dinner, we had Indian food which is right around the block from our hotel.  It was yummy, of course!

                                    Beer!

On a side note, I've been having technical difficulties uploading pictures so sorry for the weird formatting. 

Zombie day- Oct. 22

We arrived in Amsterdam at 7:00 am. It was still pitch black dark and a bit creepy.  The first thing we did was get cash out of the ATM since our hotel only takes cash.  Then we tried to get our tickets for the train into Amsterdam but the machine wouldn't take our cards.  Apparently the new thing in Europe is this chip in it with a special PIN number to work.  We ended up having to pay cash.  We realized much too late that we should've hung out in the Sky lounge until it was late enough to take our bags to the hotel.  Instead, we walked in the dark to our hotel and sat on the steps till the manager/owner? got there to open up.  It wasn't too bad, it was actually cool watching all the people zoom by on their bikes on their way to work.  

Our hotel is super old.  It was built in 1632.  Our room is on the 3rd floor (although the manager told us it was the first floor, lol!) and is called "The Rembrandt."  How cute!  The floor is sloped toward the front of the building.  Did I mention that it was old?

Scott in our hotel room with the sloped floor.

Our cute, old hotel on the corner. 

After dropping off our bags, we dragged ourselves to the Anne Frank house and got in line about 30 minutes before it opened.  There were only about 15 people in front of us.  By the time it opened at 9:00, the line stretched around the block.  We were glad we went ahead and went there first.  

                                   

                                                        the Anne Frank house

Afterward, we took a canal cruise on Holland International.  Scott and I were so tired and the boat rocking was so lulling, that we kept nodding off.  I don't remember half of it!  

         Yes, that is a three story bike parking garage. The Dutch really know how to do bike riding right, including actual bike lanes separate from the car traffic. 

                                                   One of many beautiful canal bridges.

                  Don't let the smiles fool ya, folks. We're actually asleep in this photo. 

          This is how the Dutch move out of 5 story buildings. Another thing they got right!

After that, we dragged ourselves to a restaurant near our hotel, Cafe van Zuylen.  I had a panini with goat cheese, honey, and apricots (oh and ham).  It was sooooo yummy!  Scott had the "healthy sandwich" which basically was a big multi grain roll with ham, cheese, egg, lettuce , and tomato.  We joked that maybe "healthy" really meant "hearty."  We had a corner seat by the window and people watched.  

After lunch, we came back to the hotel and took 3 hour naps.  It was awesome!  I felt a little better when we got up.  

For dinner, we ate at this fancy schmancy Belgian restuarant, Lieve.  It was also soooo good.  When we walked in, we had to choose our "atmosphere":  living room style (basically normal meal), baroque (little samples of everything, served family style), or the elegant (4 course meal). We chose the living room.  We sat at a little lounge area while they set up the table.  My first course was chestnut veloute with a garnish of bacon and roasted hazelnuts.  Scott had smoked whiting with roasted celeriac and a relish of beetroot.  For my main entree I had grilled sirloin of black angus and Scott had baked steak of deer.  We both had Belgian fries, with mayo, of course.  For dessert (yes, we couldn't resist) I had parfait of hazelnuts and Frangelico with caramel sauce, and Scott had mouse of dark chocolate with a biscuit of pink pepper.

I think we will sleep well tonight. :D