A Long Overdue Post

I can't believe that it has been over a month since my last post. So, first things first. Our trip to Europe was very cool. We stayed in Amsterdam for two nights and took the train into the city. Amsterdam is an incredible city. We spent most of the time just wandering around, taking in the sights. I love that the city is so quiet and peaceful - and the bikes! I couldn't believe the number of people that biked in and around the city. No cars driving on the street, everyone biking or on the train, this was my kind of town.

The city has the "small-town" Europe feel to it, no buildings were more than three stories, the occasional cobblestone street, open-air markets, and cafes everywhere. The buildings in Amsterdam are too small to bring furniture up and down the stairs, so most of the homes in town have these giant cables and pulleys on the roof to hoist furniture up to the third floor, as show here.

We left Amsterdam to stay in Brille, this cute little city about an hour south of Amsterdam. Brille is a small shopping, touristy town, but very cute. The first day that we were there they had this open-air market that was selling just about everything. I LOVE open-air markets, wish there were more of them, and not just in the summer. It was cool to just wander around and pick up veggies, fruit, fresh bread, cheese, and just about anything else I could have wanted.

Brille is home to this really old church that has been around forever. I think it is also the first place that the Dutch took from the Spanish in their first of many wars. Sort of incredible to walk around and think about the history of a place that has been around long enough to have had multiple wars fought over it. The church made me laugh because it was this OLD ancient building all done in brick, with this goofy red door.

From Brille, I got to keep sightseeing while Ryan was at work. I spent a day in Rotterdam and a day in The Hague. The weather was kind of crummy for the week and the days are only about 6 hours long, so the sight-seeing had to be kept to a minimum, but I did get to see some of the sights. Rotterdam, being totally destroyed during WWII was rebuilt recently and is ugly. They didn't seem to worry too much about city planning, so these really architechturally innovative buildings are tucked in with these ugly 1950's concrete block boring buildings, and some bad attempts at making some 1970's buildings look like 500 year old buildings. UGLY. But, the theme in all of the Netherlands seems to be random artwork everywhere. Hence, the random transformer sculptures.

More pictures and updates later, as soon as I can figure out why blogger only lets me publish two pictures today.