I have no idea what my Title means, but that's what's written on the wall in the tourist office in Delft, South Holland! I'm assuming it means "Welcome to Delft" or "You're in the Delft tourist office" or something along those lines.
Here is my brief trip overview for you all faithful readers...
Spent one day in London then flew to a teeny weeny country called Luxembourg where we had a friend to visit. Luxembourg has a beautiful, very "old Europe" feel to it. Much of the city is built around an old fort and there is so much history. It was a really fun trip and we had our own personal tourist who took us to the country to show us some old castles. The only problem was when I asked him about the history of the castles he showed us, his response was "Fuck if I know!" Hehe, ah well, I can't blame him, I don't know the history of much around where I live either.
I finished the book Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chavilier (I believe I spelled that write, if not, I'll fix it when I'm back in The States) while in Luxembourg. I'd seen the movie by accident (I didn't know that it was a book first) and liked it enough, but felt it was a little unfinished or not as deep as it could be. I picked up the book on sale somewhere and brought it since we'd be visiting Holland on our trip. The book was absolutely wonderful. The emotional tensions was so much more intense than the movie and it was beautifully written. Chavilier had a way of describing things using different senses. Anyways, I am now obsessed with the book and Vermeer (whom I honestly had never heard of... I'm not quite an art expert) and that has prompted this little day trip from Amsterdam to Delft (where the book takes place)...
After Luxembourg we trained it up to Brussels, Belgium and took a day trip to Mechelen, a small Belgium town. Brussels is a big, dirty, busy city and the best I can say about it is the food and beer were Excellent. I think I'm just not a huge city kind of girl and I preferred Luxembourg's small town feel to Brussels' dirty, big city feel. Mechelen was a cute little Belgium town in which we visited a Jewish Deportation Museum that was in an old train station that was used to deport Jewish people during the Holocaust. I'm reading Schindler's List right now so it fit the theme of my reading perfectly and was heartbreaking. There were photos of German's shooting Jews into a big mass grave while the Jews sat on the edge of the pit and as if to answer my lingering question of who the heck took these pictures that were so disturbingly evil, there was a note that many German officers took them as "mementos." There were also pictures of these Jewish children that a German doctor was doing medical experiments on. As much as I've read about and learned about the Holocaust, the pictures were shocking and disgusting and very disturbing.
From Brussels we trained it to Amsterdam where we're staying in a nice little Bed and Breakfast in the beautiful city. We already like Amsterdam better than Brussels and now we're in Delft, which is a beautiful small town in South Holland. We're trying to get the big city and country city feel for each country we visit, it's been really cool.
Next we'll be going to Cologne, Germany (which is a smaller city so we might not do the day trip there) and then we changed our plans from going to Paris (which hubby wasn't really into) to Switzerland! I do want to see Paris, but I'm cool with the change because I really want to see Switzerland as well. We'll be visiting Lucern, Interlaken and Geneva then flying back to London.
We're really having a ton of fun and other than the building weight of the gifts we're buying (yeah, I'm not sure how our backs will ever survive if we keep buying gifts at the rate we are), the crappy weather at the beginning of the trip, and my accidentally getting wasted off of wine and beer Inside our room last night in which I Dearly paid the price for all this morning and even now still (I think I'm the only one whose Amsterdam party story only involves beer and wine and happens inside the hotel room!!) the trip has been relatively stress free with not many bumps along the way. We've been navigating well enough even when there is no English speaking persons around and it's been such a great adventure!
I'll definitely have pictures to upload when I get back home, my hubby's a bit camera happy and has been taking a ridiculous amount of pictures, which I might make HIM upload because it will seriously take forever!!
Miss everyone and thank you for the notes!!! Keep them coming, I love hearing from everyone!
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