Amsterdam

We were running out of camera space by the time we got to Amsterdam, so I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked. Even though we got snowed on in Amsterdam, we had a great time. What an interesting city. We had all sorts of culture when we were there. We hit up the Anne Frank house (something that shouldn't be missed in my opinion), canal tours, red light district, museums, etc... It was a great end of our trip. Hopefully we can find a way to take another trip as a group sometime soon.

Bruges

Probably the best choice we made on our trip was deciding to take a day trip to Bruges. It was about an hour train ride west of Brussels. Bruges is a fairly small city with thin cobblestone streets and lots and lots of canals. Most of the day we walked around the city, climbed the famous bell tower, ate at a great brewery, the girls bought hats to keep them warm, and Karlee and I took a boat tour of the canals themselves. Also, we found a famous chocolate maker that had some very interesting, but delicious, flavors such as wasabi, fried onion, and cola. After a full day in Bruges, we headed back to Brussels to prepare for our trip to Amsterdam the following day. The last pictures of all the bikes is from the Bruges train station. It was unbelievable how many bikes were parked there for the commuters that leave and arrive at that station.

First Day in Brussels

Once we finally made it to Brussels, the weather was awful. We got out of the train station and it was sleeting and we didn't know exactly how to get to our hotel. That point was definitely the low point for everybody's patience on our trip. However, we got it all figured out, the weather cleared up a little and we headed into the center of the city. Brussels isn't the prettiest city in Europe (lots and lots of graffiti). However, there are pockets of really cool architecture and there is good Belgian beer everywhere (and chocolate). The one must see thing in Brussels is Mannaquin Pis (behind us in one of the pictures). Really sort of a strange must see.

Last Day in London

Since Karlee has kind of dropped the ball in updating the blog I thought I would add a few pictures of our last day in London. The first couple pictures are of Tower of London (very interesting place to visit) and the Tower Bridge. London was great. Lots of familiar sights to see and especially nice to have some familiar faces in town as well. Finally, we were off to Belgium on the Eurostar. Though I thought it was cool that we got to go through the Chunnel, all it amounted to really was about a half hour of darkness :)