The speedy part of our trip has begun.
In the past 8 days we have been to 4 countries and are off to a fifth
in a few more.
We arrived in Copenhagen on September 2
and met up with Jo again. We had just one night in the new home of
Our Mary, but we manage to see pretty much all of the sights. First
up we decided the best way to tackle the city in such a short time
was by canal tour, unfortunately the boat was open topped and the
rain poured down – similar to Ireland really - and we spent most of
the day looking like drowned rats. But we did manage to see Mary's
palace, the sculpture of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid,
and some beautiful old buildings.
Princess Mary's house
One of the highlights was not on the
usual tour guide. We had an hour spare before getting the night train
to Amsterdam, so decided to go to the Ice Bar. The entire bar is made
of ice, including seats, walls and the glasses themselves. You have
to dress in a thick, blue cloak and gloves and your lips go numb when
drinkign from the glass. It was an amazing experience and made the
weather outside seem so much warmer! And the alcohol made the
forthcoming 16 hour train ride seem less daunting.
In the ice bar
We arrived in Amsterdam feeling
exhausted ajfter little sleep on the train. I had decided early in
the morning I was going to get more sleep lying on the floor than
sitting in my chair, and as a result I hurt all over the next day.
But that didnt stop us. We set out walking around the city – we did
the Sex Museum and the Anne Frank Huis – both very confronting in
very different ways. And had chips with mayonaise from the original
chip stall for lunch.
Chips and mayonaise
The next day we took a free walking
tour around the city and saw a lot more and learnt about the Dutch
way of naming things – as they are. There was the Old Church, the
New Church, the New Market and the royal Palace. Then came one of the
highlights – a trip to the Heinekin brewery! yum yum!
Tasting Heinekin
Day 3 we decided was time to get out of
the city and we headed to the Hague and Delft. We saw the Escher art
gallery and lots of Delftware pottery! We also snackked on pancakes.
In the evening we went on the Red Light District pub crawl – which
was fun, we think.
in the Escher Museum
Holland was great but like Copenhagen,
it rained a lot, I was worried this would be the case with all of
Europe. Also I couldn't find a single Ollibollen in all of Holland
and we didn't see any close up windmills – very dissapointed.
In Bruge, Belgium, the sun finally came
out. We had just half a day in this beautiful town to explore and
reminisce about scenes in the movie. The hardest bit of the trip was
trying to have all the traditional Belgium foods in just one
afternoon, but we managed it – chocolate, waffles and chips.
Belgian chocolate
The sunshine continued into Paris and
we enjoyed 2 toasty warm days exploring the city of love and eating
cheese and baguettes.
Jo left us today and we are now on our way to
Bordeaux to sample some wines and work our way towards spain.
