The Netherlands: Utrecht and Amsterdam

Posted on Monday, October 29, 2012

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS – Two years ago we had planned a visit to Holland, but unfortunate circumstances required us to cancel the trip last minute. So we were determined to fit in at least a brief visit on our current European tour. On the way from Brussels we first stopped for two days in the beautiful university town of Utrecht, just 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam’s city center. We explored Utrecht and its canals by bike and foot, ate local specialities such as sausage and borecole and kruidnoten, and mingled with the pleasant Dutch locals.

There are bicycles everywhere you look in Utrecht, perhaps even more so (at least per capita) than Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: October 29th, 2012 | Filed under: Netherlands, Travel Updates | Tags: Amsterdam, Amsterdam Centraal, bicycle, bike, Bloemenmarkt, borecole, canal, canals, Couchsurfing, Dom Tower, Dutch, Holland, houseboat, Netherlands, Red Light District, train, Utrecht, Vondelpark | 1 Comment »

Onto Europe: One Week in Belgium

Posted on Wednesday, October 24, 2012

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – We have finally crossed the Atlantic and begun the European leg of our adventure. Fortunately, we had a very uneventful flight from Cancun to Brussels (minus the unhappy newborn in the seat behind us) and landed in Belgium after a short 9 hours. After the quickest international entry either of us has every experienced (at max we spent 20 minutes between disembarking our plane and exiting the security zone in the airport) we took a train into downtown Brussels towards our base for the upcoming week, an apartment just a few blocks south of the city center.