Oh Monday...Must you always come?

Oh Monday, why do you always come so fast? I apologize for my blogging absence. This is the longest time I haven’t blog since I started this. Many fun and exciting things have happened since Wednesday. First, we went to Keukenhof on Thursday and on Friday I headed to Germany for a weekend with my host parents. I got back last night.

So about this journey home…..I jumped on a train in Halle, Germany at 2:07 Sunday afternoon. I crawled into bed at 12:03 Monday morning. What should have been a 7 hour journey turned into a 10 hour torture. Apparently, our train had an accident somewhere outside of Amersfoort, Holland. We endured a 75 minute delay full of police walking up and down the outside of the train, Deutsche Bahn (DB) people walking, and the train conductor making announcements out of breath. No idea what happened. I Googled but didn’t find anything. Well after this accident our train is kaput. Yup, that’s what they said, a literal German translation. The English translation: broken; such elegance with the languages. It got a chuckle out of all of the passengers, at least in my car. We also had to wait for an alternative driver. This was fun. By the time our train got going, there was a group standing outside where our engine car would have been (I’m assuming).

Our train was originally headed to Schipol. I’m glad I wasn’t on that train playing roulette with a plane to catch! I just wanted to get home. I’m also glad I brought a 600+ page book with me to read. It’s almost finished. I started it on the journey. The trained ended in Amersfoort, well before the place where I was supposed to get off. So I get off (I don’t have a choice) and another train headed to Amsterdam Centraal is set to arrive at 10:29. All sorts of trains had delays. I don’t know why or how much was the domino effect or if something was going on with the train power grid. I finally arrive in Haarlem at 11:30. I have to figure out the busses. Now, I know how one bus line works. The others, no idea. I ask around and I’m told to wait for bus 140. Ok, I can handle that. The bus is parked there, but the driver is nowhere in sight. It isn’t schedule to leave until 11:44 so I way the 10 minutes. The driver shows up and I ask to verify and he tells me to ride till Tempeliersstraat. I can handle that. It’s only about 3 stops and takes 4 minutes. The good part of this journey, I discovered the Tempeliersstraat stop. The stop we knew about only 1 bus goes there. The other, about 10 different lines swing by. When headed to the train station, any of them work so it was nice to know that we have so many options at our fingertips.

I was so tired by the time I got home last night. I really wanted to wake up early and say good bye to Kelly’s mom but I didn’t hear a thing until my alarm went off well after they had left. Whoops. I’m sorry! I hope you have a safe trip home and it was so nice to meet you!

I am now exhausted today and don’t really want to get into a recount of everything just yet. It is too overwhelming for my brain this morning. I do want to leave you with a teaser picture though.

I believe my mom will be here this Friday in celebration of my birthday. I'm excited. Another fun week and weekend of touring!!

R.I.P. Dear Opel

When we woke up this morning, we were met with a white world. Yup, it snowed again. I was running late and asked Kelly to drive so I could eat my PB&J (breakfast) in the car on the way. When I made this request, I completely forgot that it had snowed. Kelly accepted and off we went. I felt so bad when I realized what I had done. She has told me more than once she is not a fan of driving in the snow. She said it was fine though and off we went. We get all the way to Beverwijk and start our "back road" journey towards the office. There is one notorious corner along the way, a flat 90 degree turn. Kelly was going slow, we had the snowflake on and we started down the road towards the turn. We're not sure what the snowflake does, but it helps give traction when in "snowflakey" conditions. Well, it didn't help this time. Kelly attempts the turn and we don't turn. We just continue sliding into this big yellow van. We all see it happening. We look at them, they look at us, we scream, they continue looking at us....all very slow motion. Then the SMACK came and we stopped sliding. We all get out look around, then decide its best to move the car from the center of the turn. Kelly backs it up out of the way and we call Richard. He is stuck in traffic so we call Ger. Poor guy. He was also the one who found us our apartment, took Kelly to the doctor when she was sick, and now this. He is probably ready to send us home! The people we hit turned out to be construction guys that work on cranes....and pick up wrecked vehicles from the road ways. What are the odds? They were really nice, took pictures of everything, and talked to Ger. Our car wasn't too bad. A bit of cosmetic damage, a crunched hood, bent license plate, but no fluids leaking out onto the ground. We didn't know what was going on or what to do so we stood around helplessly. Ger told us that Teus (who came with him) would take us back to the office and he would take care of it. An hour or so passes and Ger finally comes back to the office. We're not sure what he did exactly, but he showed up with a standard little car and told us they would get us an automatic tomorrow. Luckily, I know how to drive a standard, we'll see how that goes on the ice and snow. Wish us luck!

The Historical Side of Paris

Update: It took Mom 3 days, several hours, and lots of strong urging before she read my blog close enough to find the "challenge." Thank you Mom.

Disclosure: This is going to be a rather lenghty post and I don't believe I will use the copy and past function from Word becuase I don't have enough pateience today so therefore, please forgive any misspellings.


To start off our Saturday, Kelly and I took advantage of the snooze button on the alarm and didn't leave the hotel until about 11. I know, we are bad tourists, but our Eiffel tower excursion didn't get us home until midnight. We came up with a game plan and headed off to conquer the city. First stop, the Arc de Triomphe. We didn't want to pay 5 Euros to go inside it, so we took pictures from the safe side of the roundabout.

While we were standing there we hear a loud crash, see a hub cap roll across the street and there is a car skidding to a stop and a bumper with a license plate in the middle of the road. I'm not sure what happened exactly, but it was funny to see and made me happy our Opel was parked safely in her little spot. Kelly and I had to get a picture together to mark the occassion!

The street, Champs-Elysees is laid out with the Arc on one end and the Louvre on the other. It was built as a memorial Arc so that Napolean could ride his horses through it back to his palace at the other end (the Louvre). Champs-Elysees is one of the most famous, prestigious streets in the world with some rents at 1.1 million Euro per 1,000 sq ft. They also have stores such as the largest Adidas store, Europes' largest Gap store, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Zara, and Disney. It is just a beautiful street with a long history dating back to 1616.

Another store on this street is Swaroski. So of course Kelly and I had to pop in! We found an AMAZING stair case that we will both someday have in our houses. It was crystals in the glass and with all of the bright lights, it just sparkled! I love all things shiny and this was no exception!

After Swaroski it started to rain, and rain, and Kelly and I are not a big fan of getting wet so we ducked into the Gap. I was able to find a few nice sweaters, all 75% off, so I invested further into warm clothes attire. It has already proven useful! After the Gap it was still raining so we hurried to the next metro station to jump on it to take us to the Louvre. I started reading the history of the Louvre and got so involved with it I couldn't pick out any history to include in the blog. Instead, here is a link to the site. I will say though, that it has nearly 35,000 objects dating back to Pre History until the 19th century that are displayed over 653,300 sq. ft. To say the least, you could spend an entire weekend in that place and still not see all of it.

Kelly and I have both previously been to the Louvre so we did not go in this time. We did take pictures of the outside though.

This above picture has a story, one that ends in black and blue marks on one of us and the other practically rolling on the wet ground laughing. I will give you a moment to guess. Ready for the answer? Here is the story: Kelly took a very similar picture and I got jealous and decided I wanted one too. So I climb up on the wet, slick stone to pose for my picture with the Louvre in the background. So classic right? Well in addittion to the fountains in the courtyard area there are also two larger-than-life pyramids (so I thought anyways). The larger pyramid can be seen in my picture and the smaller one is behind and a bit to the left of from where this picture was taken. Kelly didn't like the prespective of my picture so she started backing up to get a better picture and I thought she would have noticed the gian 10 ft pyramid behind her when we walked in, but apparently she missed it. She was stepping backwards, I don't really grasp what is happening until Kelly is leaning over, trying to regain her balance slowly rolling down the pyramid landing on the wet ground silently. She tried to break her fall with her arm but it just caught the edge of the glass pyramid and she had a bruise forming by dinner. It all happened in such slow motion. I wanted to run to her, but I was on a wet stone and hear of falling into the fountain on my right, so as a bad friend, I was blamed for not warning her that a giant, stationary pyramid was behind her. I am laughing so hard as I write this, I am tearing up. Kelly isn't happy that I still get such a chuckle out of it, but it was too funny.

Now, back on to serious tour business: This is another picture of the Louvre. The skies are nasty grey, just waiting to keep raining on us. We see a man selling umbrellas for 5 Euro each, we end up walking away with 2 for 7 Euro. I consider that a decent deal. Happy to report though, we did not need those umbrellas because it didn't rain anymore. Murphey's law I guess.

The below picture is a view from the "courtyard" of the Louvre to the Eiffle Tower. It is such a beautiful city!

The below picture is a view down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. A beautiful (and expensive) district.

After walking around the Louvre, we headed to Tiffany & Co. I was given a charm bracelet from there for my college graduation gift from my grandparents. I admit, I sometimes browse their website and discovered they sell Eiffel Tower charms. I informed my loving, patient mother that if I make it to Paris, I would be investing in one of those. She nodded so I took that as approval. On our adventure there, we walked by so many beautiful stores. DeBeers, Cartier, Chanel, Mikimoto Pearls and many, many more. Their window displays were amazing. The jewelry looked like something that you might see a princess wear...or at the Oscars. There were people actually in these stores as well. We continue past all of the amazing jewelry until we see the tale-tale blue sign. We head to the door, try to open it and it's locked. They had to buzz us in (unlike the gas station). Well, actually they had the scary looking door man open the door for us. This would be my second trip into the depths of this amazing store. The first time was when I was 17 and in DC for a field trip. I also found my $97,000 engagment ring that I'm holding out for...but I won't hold my breath. Anyways, he head downstairs to "cheap" sterling sliver charms and I find my Eiffle Tower, buy it and we head out. Our curiosity gets the best of us though because we decide to look around. We wander upstairs where they have the "bridal" collection. There were several couples up there as well. Oh the beauty of all that sparkles! Kelly and I head out before we bankrupt ourselves and go back to the direction of wisdom and museums. We grab a dessert at a cute bakery and map out our afternoon plans. I have a hankering to do a museum so we decide on the Musee d'Orsay (picture below).

On our we walk over a bridge that has all sorts of locks attached to it. It is a lock of love, as google informed us. Couples put a lock on the bridge signifying their unbreakable love. Very cute. If I ever succomb to this, I will be sure to engrave my lock ahead of time. Those look so much classier.

Now, back to the museum. It is housed in an old train station built between 1898 and 1900. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces (the largest in the world) by such painters such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.

That was plagerized from Wikipedia. Here is a picture we took of one of Van Gogh's work, The Church at Auvers .

And one of his self portraits:

The museum was a big, wide open space, very much like a train station. It was an enjoyable experience compared to a cramped museum with painting after painting. Of course the museum was also undergoing renovations so things were a bit different than normal but it was still a great experience. They also have 86 paintings by Monet which we enjoyed looking at as well. In addition to the traditional paintings and sculptures they had antique furniture and a beautiful hall that overlooked the river. Once again, in my fascination with lighting fixtures, I had to take a picture of what the Europeans do so well, elegance.

It was getting late and the museum would be closing soon, as told by the giant clock, so we headed out. It was a quick trip around, but suitable enough for me and Kelly.

When Kelly was here a few years ago a friend, who used to be a tour guide in the city, recommended a fun restaurant to her and her family. We decided to set out in search of it again. It is in the Montmarte district so we hopped on the metro and headed that way. Well, we were 30 minutes early and walked in on them eating dinner. Whoops. So we knew Moulin Rouge wasn't too far away and headed that way. We also found a cute gallery displaying original works of art by various local painters. I would have loved to spend money there, but I have to draw the line somehwere. We kept walking downhill until we found it and took some pictures:

We didn't want to look desperate by showing back up at the restaurant at exactly 7 so we tried to play it cool and went to an Australian bar for a beer. At about 7:30 we decided we were too tired to walk uphill so we hopped on the metro again and rode the one stop. That public transportation and sure be handy! By the time we got there the place was PACKED. We luckily squeezed in becuase there were only two of us. You have to hang your jacket in a certain area because there isn't room at the table for personal belongings. Kelly then decides she has to go to the restroom before we sit down. I don't want to stand in the jacket hallway like a wierdo so I head to the table. To sit down at this table, one side is against a wall on a bench and the other has chairs and you have to stand on the chair and step over the table to get to the bench. Kelly warned me about this and we decided she would step over. I think she did the bathroom stunt on purpose although she won't admit it. I head to the table, alone, and the waiter moves the chair, offers me his hand, and that is how I got pressued into stepping over a table in a really crowded restaurant in Paris. I was mad at Kelly. After I'm squeezed back into place between the table and the wall, they ask if we want red or white and cheese or meat. Those are the menu choices. Red or white wine and cheese or meat fondue. The wine is served in baby bottles because, from what I've read, you have to pay at tax for all wine served in glasses. We get our baby bottles and the fondue and enjoy our dinner.

We were seated between a French group of 3 and a very loud, singing group from Spain? The rest of the restaurant was filled with American girls. They looked young, and drunk. I have no idea what they were doing in the city in February, but they were having a good time and I guess that is what is important. We didn't loiter for too long and then we headed back to the hotel for bed. It had been a long day and we were exhausted!

That finishes up our Saturday in Paris. Congratulations on making through the entire posting! I appreciate the patience!

Antwerp, Part 1

Welcome to Antwerp! This past weekend has been super exciting and very, very busy. I’m not really sure how and where to start blogging about this, so I’m going to try and break it up into days. So, we’ll start with our first day there, Saturday. I would like to also add that we had fantastic weather for the entire 2 days we were there (unless otherwise stated). It was cold, but sunny. We even got to wear our sunglasses!

We got a bit of a late start but it only took us 1.5 hours to drive there and another ½ hour to find our hotel. We got a little lost, but once we found it, it was really easy. We stayed at a safe Holiday inn Express which had parking so that was helpful. It also wasn’t as close to the city center as I would have liked, but we didn’t want to spend the money so we helped improve our legs. After a 20 minute walk, we found the city center with their gorgeous church. This is a teaser photo, I will cover the church more in my next posting.

They have a pretty market area with little shops and restaurants all over. It’s unusual because their market area is L shaped and has a big fountain that the water just flows out onto the cobblestones. Since it was cold there wasn’t any flowing water. The thought is nice though. This picture is of the town hall. Another pretty building in an ancient European town.

Everyone in Holland that we told we were going to Antwerp always gave us a funny look and basically told us we were wasting our time. Well, they were all wrong! We had so much fun! We got a small snack/lunch after we got to the square to take a bit of a breather and relax after our hotel search and walk. We also started the shopping extravaganza. We found a precious store that sells lace (and on sale) so I got some white linen place mats and matching napkins for my future table setting of 6. They will go great with my Delft Blue plates I bought years ago (and we learned they no longer make) and my Delft blue vase that is still in route to my mother’s house. Kelly is a fantastic shopper and a girl after my own heart. We both have a taste for nice things, and we generally encourage each other to make the purchase of the nice timeless pieces. So after consulting with Kelly on the matter, I’ve almost got my table setting complete so maybe I can find some nice wine glasses somewhere and have a worldly table. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled.

This is a picture of the guildhouses on the square. They are so pretty and classic. I think I could handle living on one!

I wanted to take another picture of the pretty houses because I like the architecture so much.

The below picture is of Steen castle. It’s right on the water of the Schelde River that flows through the city and was once used to control the river. Between 1303 and 1827 it was used as a prison which more pertained to a holding area for someone awaiting sentencing rather than a punishment location. It wasn’t fair either; the rich were kept in the right wing and the poor in the left wing. A lot of it was torn down to finish connecting the roadways that is the modern city but the castle still stands and has been renovated. It is currently closed because it was a museum that has since moved to a new location. To my knowledge, there isn’t a future use for it…yet but hopefully they will find one. It is a neat building!!

Well the castle was on the river, a 15 min walk or so from the Grote Markt (city center). We thought we would take another street and make a bit of a loop back to the center. Oh boy did we embark on an adventure! Shortly after leaving the safety of the tourism trap we headed back on this empty street. We did not see this as a warning sign because it seemed that the only streets that had people on them was the shopping street and the center. The big yellow (on the map) street we always walked on was awkwardly empty compared to what other city streets are like, so it seemed normal to us. Well as our walking progressed, we noticed a scantily clad woman in the window. This was not an area we really wanted to explore so we took the next street over and figured that would fix it. Kelly and I were deeply engrossed in our conversation and didn’t notice anything until we realized that there were a lot of men on the street. All of the sudden we looked up and we were surrounded by more women in windows. They were everywhere! Kelly and I were the only 2 non-working women on the street. So we started to walk faster as we were nervously laughing about the situation and realized that this could quite possibly be the longest street in Antwerp. It never ended! There were old men, young men, dirty men, all walking, window shopping, and checking prices. It was definitely not my cup of tea.

The street finally ended so we kept heading in what we thought was the right direction until we emerged on the main street not too far from our hotel. We were happy to know where we were, and be off the dirty street, but we were now a 15 min walk in the wrong direction of where we wanted to be after a good 30 min walk to get there. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier and were dying for a margarita so that was our goal. Find the flag (they had it hanging outside of the restaurant). We finally found it, and ordered a great margarita and a quesadilla as an appetizer. There was a cute, blond Belgian waiter who worked for his uncle who has been to Mexico. We told the waiter he needed to go as part of business development and research. He agreed. We then proceeded to take a variety of pictures and have a delicious steak. Kelly got an enchilada which was really a burrito. They had the two confused. We figured we would let them figure it out. The place even had sombreros! So they had us take a picture with the hats. I figured I wouldn’t mention that I had taken a picture very similar to this in real Mexico not too long ago. We all had a good time!

They also had these adorable cacti dressed up as little whiskered creatures so I had to take a picture with them.

Cheers to you Antwerp! A great restaurant with a great margarita. There really isn't too much better than that....especially after getting lost in the red light district!

After the Mexican food, we heard about a cute pub/restaurant called Het Elfde Gebod. It is decked out in all religious statues. They wouldn't let us in if we didn't eat something, so we told them we wanted to eat. He was dissapointed that we just wanted dessert. I don't think he liked us. The desert wasn't even very good. Great presentation, but it ended there. My cream brulee tasted like flan...which isn't bad, but it wasn't cream brulee. We wanted to go to another little bar that was mentioned in our book, but we couldn't find it on the map or via Google maps on my phone. It had started to snow pretty heavily that night so we didn't really want to wonder around lost in the cold, wet weather. We started walking direction of home and saw an Irish Pub so we had to go in.

It was so quaint and they had live music! There was a guy singing named Taco who wore square toed boot. He had a cute irish accent and sang great classics so we could all sing along! We had great beer and great music. It's hard to ask for much more on a Saturday night. We eventually found our way home after a few hours of singing. It had stopped snowing by the time we headed home so that was helpful. Our poor legs were so tired from walking loops around the city, it felt great to crash into bed.

That was day 1 - Antwerp. Stay tuned for day 2 - Antwerp (The day we went diamond shopping).

We're Legal!!!

Kelly and I went to Hoofddorp to apply for our Dutch residency. We got it! Well, we got the sticker in our passports while we wait for the cards to come in. This is my first picture as a legal resident. Totally different than all the rest, right? I know, but still, Kelly and I had to celebrate.

So we took a picture of us two together in fron of the steps leading up to the big, glorified MVD office. We had to take a number and everything, but it went so smoothly. Definitely put our American style process to shame. I won't mention, though, the stack of 50 papers that the lawyer office put together for us so all we had to do was show up, hand them the papers, and pay. Pretty easy on our ends!

So to properly celebrate, we went to this little restauraunt not far from work. Richard (our boss) took us there during our first week but we haven't been back. They have an amazing chicken sandwhich that Kelly was craving and I wasn't going to stand in the way of great food so we set off to search for it. We ended up taking 3 different exits trying to see which one looked familiar enough, and guess what? It was the 3rd exit (and closest to work, I might add). So we go in, thinking we are so sly and proud of our selves for finding it. Granted it was lunch time and we didn't do anything too wrong, we could have eaten at a faster place and come back to work a bit sooner. That didn't sound so good though. We came up with a plan, if anyone asked, we just ate while "on our way back." Right at the time our celebratory brownie and ice cream came (AMAZING!) in walks Richard. Next door to the shop is a ski shop and he wanted to get some things for his up coming family trip. We got busted! He just stopped by and said "hello" and was off again. Kelly and I just started laughing, of all the odds....and I had thought these very thoughts when we got there but didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing us! Can't win them all! Maybe next time we'll be a bit sneakier......

To The Lawyers....

Kelly has been sick the past couple of days. We had a doener at a Turkish restaurant; it’s a bit like a gyro. Well they are my favorite, and I guess they don’t like Kelly. She got food poisoning. The place is even named “Amalia” so in theory, I gave her food poisoning. She was a wreck on Wednesday and we took her to the Dutch doctor’s because she looked like death. I really didn’t want her to die. So one of the guys helped us find a doctor nearby and he took us there then to the pharmacy where we got Kelly all hooked up. I am happy to announce the medicines helped and Kelly is still alive, but not quite back to normal.

She looked almost normal this morning, but then something hit her mid morning and she got sick again. We had to go to Amsterdam this afternoon to meet with the immigration lawyers to get the paperwork we need to file for our residency permits. I was a bit worried Kelly wasn’t going to make it. After a 2 hour nap, she was ready to face the world. We “cheated” and drove to the train station instead of walking, figured out how to buy a ticket and managed to get on the correct train. After a short 15 minute ride, we were at that Central Amsterdam train station. It was so easy! The outside of the train station is BEAUTIFUL (see picture below)! We managed to find the correct street we needed and started walking.

A sea of bicycles outside of the train station. Definitely the most I've ever seen in one place!

Before we went to the lawyer’s office, we had to get Dutch government approved photos made. The office told us of a photo place just down the street so we managed to find that and get the photos done. It was all so fast and easy. The photo man was very nice and helpful and spoke great English. That is one great thing about this country, everyone knows English. We walked by a pizza place and Kelly said she needed some food so we stopped to get some. We had a bit of extra time, so it was a nice little break.

We then walked to the lawyer’s office, signed our life away on about 20 different pages, and left all in about 20 minutes. I was very impressed. I was expecting a huge ordeal full of torture, but it was painless. On our walk back to the train station we were able to look in the windows of all of the diamond stores around. Very pretty jewelry! Now all I need is a few extra hundreds (thousands) of Euros and a reason and I would be set!! We didn’t do any sightseeing, it was a straight there and home mission but, hopefully, Kelly will feel back to herself again by Saturday and we plan on going back for 2 days of extensive sightseeing and food eating. I cannot wait!

When Kelly was napping today, I ran across the street and got some potatoes to make her potato soup. It’s what my Mom always made me when I was sick, so I figured it had to work! It’s not quite done yet, still boiling on the stove, but I hope it turns out. We shall see. I figured this is a turning point that I started making potato soup instead of having it made for me. I’m not sure I’m ready for this, but I guess it crept up on me without me knowing. I’m sure I can revert back childhood when I’m around my mom. I don’t think I am very fond of the adult/responsibility thing. I do like the freedom and privileges though! Something tells me they happen to go hand in hand though.

Better go check my soup!