Night bus

I didn't get to post yesterday, because we took the night bus from Amsterdam to berlin... but more on that later.

Yesterday was our final day in Amsterdam and we walked all around the city once more.
We started out and walked around Dam Square, and then to the Rijksmuseum which is very cool.  There we saw some more Van Gogh paintings, and a bunch of Rembrandt van Rijn paintings and some other cool art and historical treasures that are part of the Netherlands heritage.

After that we went to a local Amsterdam Brewery and missed the beginning of the tour by about 4 minutes... rats.  That's okay, I had a sampling of 5 of their beers anyway.  (For those who know what this means, they kind of were like Wild Wolf)

Then we did an interesting thing.  Both of us had seen this documentary called "Nefarious" about the sex trafficking industry and there was a significant portion of the film devoted to the Red Light District.  (I highly recommend watching this if you would like awareness about these world problems).  It was obvious that this is a broken place with broken people.  We walked through during the daytime, so sex was not in your face everywhere, but even the closer you got to the district, the streets were just trashy and the buildings were dull and the feeling was just dark all around.  It was also pouring down rain on us during this and I felt that it was appropriate because it was like they were dampening the life of the city and of all the people that went near the few blocks that make up the district.

After that it was time to go.  We got on the bus and it was crowded and stopped alot, and so we didn't get a lot of sleep.  Tonight might be an early night.

Iconic painting called Waterloo.

Brouwerij 't IJ is the brewery I went to.

Rijksmuseum at night.

Amsterdam's canals at night.

Are you getting somewhere?

Or did you get lost in Amsterdam?

I didn't.

Yesterday was a good day!  After we got all settled, Rosalie and I went out to get some dinner and found this cool cafe in an area called De Pijp (peep).  They had a nice mashed potato and beef and vegetable stew that I had.  And tried a beer from the local Brouwerij 't IJ.  Then went back to the Hostel for the evening.
Also, something that I didn't realize about the city...Bicycles are EVERYWHERE.  Amsterdam is probably the most bike friendly city I have ever been to.  They have traffic lights for the bike lanes and everything.

Today was a full day.

Starting out at 7:45AM we had breakfast and then headed out.

The first stop was the Van Gogh Museum.  The outside of the building was unimpressive so I didn't get a picture of that (Maybe tomorrow) but on the inside, you got to see some of the great works of the wonderful artist Harry Van Gogh.  Haha...Just kidding, Vincent Van Gogh.  Throughout the museum, there are little informational tidbits about his life and the work that he has done.  Things such as:
- In 1880, Van Gogh decided he was going to be an artist.  He had not studied any art at this point.
- He died in 1890, meaning that all of the art that he did was learned and became such a art world changer in only 10 years.  (So, dont let anyone tell you that you are too old to start something new!)
- He voluntarily checked himself into a mental hospital at one point in his life.  He still did excellent drawings while in the hospital.
- He shot himself in the stomach in a field and died days later.
It was awesome to see most of his famous works.  The only ones we didn't see were Sunflowers which is in the National Gallery in London and Starry Night which is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I also found that he liked drawing self portraits.  I think there were at least 7 of them in this museum.

After that we walked around the city for most of the afternoon.  We walked around a park called the Vondelpark which was huge and there were beautiful dogs running all around.  I saw a group of people playing soccer there and at one point they kicked the ball in my direction so I rainbow kicked up to myself and bicycle kicked it back to them (in my head).

We walked from the park to a place called Leidesplein.  There were a bunch of food shops around there.  We eventually got to a place called the Bloemenmarkt.  This is where there are a whole bunch of shops that sell flowers and other souvenirs.  It was a really nice place.
Then we walked a big loop around the city, passing a school that was just letting out.  (Dutch children riding their bicycles are very cute).  We also passed the Universitat Van Amsterdam... that is a UVA that I don't have any ill feelings toward.

We went back to the hostel and I met three of the other people in here.  Two of them, Doug and Emory, are from Austin, Texas.  The third was Patricia from Chile.  They were very nice and it was fun just to talk about what's going on with other people.

We left for dinner and it was pouring down rain.  My jacket got soaked, but it dries off nicely (Dear North Face, thank you!)  .We went to a sports bar and had dutch pancakes.  They were huge (like bigger than the plate they came on) and good.  They were kind of like crepes, but a little thicker.

After that it was back to the hostel to dry off.

This is the Rijksmuseum.  This is a National Museum which was just refurbished for 320 million Euro.

This is the Concertgebouw.  A concert hall.

Row houses along one of the canals in Amsterdam.

That was easy

It was like we hit the Staples Button.

We checked out of our Hostel in Brussels and walked a little bit around the city one last time.  We took the Metro to the bus station got on the bus and then left without incident.

The bus took us through Antwerp, Rotterdam, and the Hague, so it was nice to get to see all those places as the went by the windows.  We got to the bus station at 5:00PM were helped by two very nice Dutch workers at the train station.  We took the tram to a station two blocks away from the hostel and got checked in.  The staff is very friendly and helped us figure out some things that we might want to do.

That's where we are now.  Getting ready to go out for some dinner and see some of the city.


Not to leave the picture lovers empty handed.

This is the outside of the Notre Dame du Sablon Cathedral

And this is a different Cathedral that I don't know the whole name of it, because all the signs leading to it just said Cathedral.

Brussels Pics

This is a place called the Atomium, it is huge.

Hotel de Ville at night

Museum de Ville at night

Intricate stained glass at the Notre Dame du Sablon Cathedral

Belgian King's house

I met a man in Brussels...

...He was six foot four and made of muscles.

Day Two was fun, but before I get ahead of myself, there were a couple things from yesterday that I forgot to mention or show.

This is a art installation in front of the national opera house

 The Museum de Ville, This is across the square from the Hotel de Ville in the Grand Place

 This is a bank in the grand place.

This little guy is a statue that stands maybe 2 feet tall and his name is Mannekin Pis.


Today, we started out and walked around the city some more.  We decided we were going to get some waffles so we found a place in an indoor mall and Rosalie had a waffle with strawberry, banana, whipped cream and milk chocolate on it.  I had whipped cream with dark chocolate and sprinkles on mine.  Those waffles filled us up.  We then went and saw some of the cathedrals that we did not make it into yesterday, we saw the Belgian kings palace, the US Embassy, a place called the Atomium, and the Belgian national football team's home stadium.

Then we went to dinner at this neat little place called In't Spinnakopke.  We each had a great meal, mine was a Carbannados du Lambic and it was goooooood.

After dinner, we walked to the Grand Place again to get pictures of it at night.  It was very nice when lit up.
then back to the Hostel.

I'll put pictures up of some of these things when my internet connection is a little faster.

I am ready for a good sleep after today!

The Eagle has landed

The Eagle... That sounds like a good new nickname for me.

I arrived in Brussels, Belgium without any problems.  Plane was sparse so say the least, so I had two seats all to myself.  If I would have tried, I probably could have found a four seat row and slept lying down.  But I still got a fair amount of sleep!

At the airport, I met up with Rosalie Stoke.  For those who don't know, we will be travelling together for the first two months of my trip.  We made our way to the train stop and took the train to Brussell-Centraal train station.

At this point we realized that we did not print out directions on how to get to the Hostel... Oooops.
But it was alright. We went to a Kiosk to get a travel pass for the public transportation system here and the guy was very nice and slightly helpful.  He gave us a route to find the Hostel.  It involved going one stop on the metro and then taking bus 86 to Hainaut.

Finding where bus 86 picked up was not easy, we spend about 30 minutes looking for it, but eventually found it and made our way to the Hostel.  We got checked in and used the hostel's free wifi to get plans ready for the rest of the day.

We walked around the city seeing some of the sights until 5PM where we met up with a friend of our hometown pastor.  His name was Thierry.  We was very interesting and showed us even more of the city and gave us background information on what it's like to be Belgian.

After spending most of the evening with him, we got back to the Hostel and that was the first day.

Not to leave y'all empty handed,

This is the Hotel de Ville, the City Building.  It's hard to get perspective from just the picture, but that thing is really tall.  It hurt my eyes to look up at.

I'll post more pictures later, but right now, I'm off to explore.

Getting ready

Less than two weeks until I head off.  I am excited but still have tons of stuff to get done.

I started packing the backpack/suitcase today and my computer decided it was going to stop working... so the packing list which I created on the computer was missing.  It only took me about 4 hours to figure out how to fix the computer.  Thank God for smart phones because I would have never figured it out.

Back on track... I do find it funny that I am packing less stuff for a 3 month trip than I did for a one week vacation.