Home sweet home!

We are home now. We got back late Thursday evening and we have been enjoying our couch! The flight was about 8.5hrs and it was much better than the flight over. We stayed awake during the flight because we landed at 6:10pm and wanted to make sure we would be able to sleep. 

We brought home Belgian chocolates and WOW! They are amazing!!

Thank you for reading our blog! I hope you enjoyed it and felt like you were there! If you plan on traveling to Europe feel free to ask us anything! It was really hard for us- knowing how to book things and what our expenses would be like- but now we have the answers! 

What an amazing experience we had! Thanks for sharing it with us! Now we have a wedding to plan :) 

Amsterdam, Holland & Belgium

Monday, August 11th, we woke up and we headed off for Holland...Amsterdam in particular. We were only about a 2 hour drive away, and since we were so close Kevin and I felt like we should definitely go and see it. 

We stayed at a place called Hotel Sander it cost €72 + €27 for city tax. Split between the 2 couples it was not bad at all-it was a quad room. We got into Amsterdam around 1pm. We checked into our hotel, had a glass of wine, and headed off to get some lunch. 

Stefanie and Rob at lunch. 

Kevin and I had sandwiches. One with chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato. One with roast beef, red onion, spicy sauce, and melted cheese- it was the best! And we had a Heineken with lunch. 

After lunch we walked through a park and up to tulip island. Holland is known for tulips- which is my favorite flower! 

This is where people put lost items found in the park/city 

We walked through the park to a bicycle rental shop and rented 4 bikes. The bikes were too big for me so I had to get a children's bike...it was just the right size for me! :) here's a picture of my bike next to Kevin's bike. 

We biked through the city, which was a great way to see everything. The city was beautiful! Amsterdam is the city of bikes, and it was actually really scary because people just flew around you and the streets are so small. 

Central station: 

We wanted to go into the Anne Frank house but the line was extremely long and we had seen pictures online so we didn't feel it was worth waiting half the day for it. 

The only other thing we wanted to do but didn't have time for was a tour of the canals. 

It eventually started to rain really hard so we stopped into a pub and had a few drinks. Kevin and I had gluevine which is red wine, with cloves, cinnamon, and brandy. It is served warm and it's so good...my dad makes it at Christmas. It smells like Christmas in a cup.

This is how Rob writes USA :) 

Next we stopped and had Nutella crepes which were delicious!! 

Then we headed back to our hotel room on our bikes and it started to POUR rain on us. So we stopped under a doorway for shelter until the rain stopped...this happened about 5-6 different times. It was such a relief to get back to our hotel. 

We checked out this morning (Tuesday, August 12th), returned our bikes, had bagels with chive and onion cream cheese and coffee, and headed back to Belgium. 

We got to see our friend Bill who we were supposed to spend some time with here but he fell off a ladder and broke his femur last week :( he's stuck at home for 8 weeks while he heals. It was great to see him! His wife Hilda served us coffee and Belgian pie. It was custard, cherries, whip cream, white chocolate shavings in a think pie crust. It was delicious! 

Bill's house- which is beautiful inside and out! There back yard was paradise...with hydrangeas growing everywhere :) 

Then we went to go see Bill's daughter Hannah June and her boyfriend Koen (pronounced coon). She cooked a typical Belgian dinner for us, it's called Stoofvlees (stow-flays). It's like beef stroganoff. It was delicious! She served it with frites (fries) and salad. 

Now we are relaxing after our amazing dinner and in about an hour we are going to watch Koen and Rob's football game (soccer). 

Tomorrow we leave for Beauvais airport. It's in Paris, and we stay in a hotel for the evening to wait for our morning flight to Dublin. From Dublin we fly straight to Orlando. 

These 3 weeks have been AMAZING!! To say the least. 3 weeks was the perfect amount of time to stay - while we have loved every minute of our trip there is no place like home. We miss our puppies A LOT! And our family too of course!  

Oh and before I forget to mention if you ever travel to Belgium or Holland practically no where accepts credit cards. Cash only. These have been the only places like that! 

Leuven, Belguim

Yesterday, Sunday August 10th we left France out of the Geneva airport in Switzerland and flew to Brussels, Belgium. Our friends Rob and Stefanie picked us up at the airport and took us back to their home in Kelssel-lo, it's part of a bigger town called Leuven (pronounced Loo-ven). 

Our flight to Brussels was so turbulent and I had 2 little boys behind my seat that were yelling and kicking my seat the entire hour long flight. So, when we arrived we relaxed and had a beer and some cheese...showered and freshened up. Then left to go see downtown Leuven and have dinner. Belgium is beautiful! We wish we had more time here! Drinking is huge here. The bars don't close until everyone leaves, which they said is often 8am or so because it's a college town. 

This is a picture of the college library. Their college is over 500 years old. 

There is a Belgian artist that does weird art like this...it's a beetle on a needle and it's right in front of that beautiful library. Even our Belgian friends think it's weird and don't really get it. 

This is a picture of city hall. Pictures truly can't do justice because the detail is just so amazing. 

Then we stopped and had dinner at a place called Notre Dame. The portion sizes were so big and for a really good price. I had a very typical Belgian dinner recommended by Stefanie and Rob, it was pastry with chicken and mushrooms in a white gravy with fries. Kevin had Mac and Cheese with ham- it's nothing like American Mac and Cheese, it's amazing! It's really surprised Kevin and I that in France and Belguim if you don't finish your food at a restaurant you do not take it home. They've said that is a very American thing to do. Which is so surprising because things are so expensive here and that just seems so wasteful. Also we've been giggling ever since Scotland because they say how huge American portion sizes are everywhere we go but their portions are the same if not bigger every place we've eaten! :) 

Then we went to a bar called The Capital. This bar has 2000 beer choices. I got a banana beer..it smelled like banana bread and tasted like banana juice! It was the perfect dessert :) Kevin had a beer that is known as the best beer in the world. For 1 bottle it was €13. That's very expensive! My beer was only €3. Typically beer here is very cheap. The bar was so cool! The bottom level of the bar was where they store the beer, each beer has a code so when you order you order by the code, for example mine was 1070. The bartender puts the code into his PDA thing and a guy on the bottom level finds the beer and sends it up on a lift wheel/hoist. It is so cool! And there are windows in the floor so you can see the guy below fetching beers. Rob calls him the beer leprechaun. It was a really pretty bar! We enjoyed it. 

A picture of the best beer in the world! It actually was very very good! 

Then we headed home to sleep because today we are off to Amsterdam. We got a hotel for $97.00, so only €72 to split between the 4 of us. We are excited! 

Our walk back to the car:

That's the moon above Rob's head 

Leuven police department: