Beer Country

We arrived into the Amsterdam airport early on Sunday morning, picked up the beautiful Toyota rental car (at least Joe was excited) & headed out for Belgium. Mags & I spent most of the 3+ hour car ride recovering from Street Parade (aka sleeping like rocks in the back seat) while Dad drove & Joe managed the generic TomTom. We stopped into Brussels for lunch & an afternoon walk. Immediately we felt grateful that we were staying in Bruges for our time in Belgium. Brussels was nice enough, just completely & utterly over-run with people. So, after we sampled the famous Belgian fare - beer, frites (tasted just like fries), and waffels (the one joe had was burnt), we peaced out of there. But, first we attempted a stop at Waterloo (Napoleon's last stand), which I suppose we expected would be well-marked when we arrived. After driving through the entire town (again, the ladies were sleeping), the boys were ready to cut their losses & head along to Bruges, but Mags wasn't having it (once Joe woke her up), so we stopped off at a gas station for assistance. Turns out we were about 200m away from the site, so we stopped in for a pleasant look around & a long history lesson (don't quiz me now, I must have blocked that 30 min lecture out of my mind).

Finally, we got back on the road again & an hour and a half later, we breezed into gorgeous Bruges. On the car ride into town we made a loose itinerary (including the restaurants that we wanted to eat in). Sunday night all we had time for was checking in & relaxing for a bit before it was dinner time. Dinner time - the highlight of the vacation! We had (sort of randomly, thanks again Rick Steves) decided on a place called Tom's Diner on the outskirts of town. The place had only about 8 tables, just one chef/owner, exposed brick, cozy environs. We were happy immediately. Then, we each ordered a different delicious Belgian beer & they came with tiny snacks of olives & homemade Goldfish crackers, and we knew, this was love, love at first bite. Dinner was impeccable, drool is forming in my mouth now, just thinking of it. Jokingly, I said to the waitress, we should make a reservation for tomorrow night. Towards the end of the meal she came up & said they had only one table left for the following evening, did we seriously want it? We didn't hesitate, of course we did! We were excited about it all the next day, oh my gosh, we are hopeless foodies. We broached the subject of Tom, the chef, becoming our private chef, so if anyone out there wants to contribute to that fund, feel free.

Beyond the amazing food & beer, Bruges itself is a perfectly preserved town with a fabulous old brewery, a Michelangelo statue, canals, quaint little streets & fabulous shops. If they had any industry there other than tourism, it would be tops on my list for where to live next.

After our two nights of deliciousness in Bruges, we headed back to the Netherlands, stopping at the Kroeller-Mueller Museum, which houses the second largest VanGogh collection in the world (just behind the VanGogh Museum in Amsterdam) within a large forest preserve. The park has free white bikes (or as Ron says - at no additional cost) that are for the use of all guests. We hoped on the one-speed, hand-brake bikes & headed up the museum while Nick rested (and wandered the parking lot like a vagrant looking for loose change - fortunately he found enough to cover parking). The museum was fantastic. They have no shortage of uber-famous VanGogh works, all housed in a low-key, relatively uncrowded museum. We saw VanGogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, which was one of the highlights of my art-going life. We had the opportunity to get up close to it 3, 4, 5 times, viewing it from afar with little distraction, checking out the thickness of the paint around the light fixture on the painting, which radiates light all over the canvas. It was a great museum and the bike ride to and from the museum topped off the afternoon perfectly.

It was early evening before we pulled into Amsterdam & our 'penthouse suite' which was at the top of three very very steep sets of stairs. The place certainly could have used a bit of updating, but we were able to make dinner a few nights & play cards on the balcony while enjoying a few Belgian beers that we had imported. We jammed out to Jimi Hendrix, cooked up a scrumptious dinner & hit the hay early. Amsterdam included a whirl-wind of city walking tours, Birkenstock sightings, Anne Frank House (sobering & beautifully well-done), VanGogh Museum (obnoxiously crowded, people were waiting in line even within the museum to view the paintings), Red Light District walk, complete with wasted, flabby, shirtless Brits (this was at 2 in the afternoon), more Birkenstock sightings, Kettle chips (we brought some back with us to Switzerland!), and a ton of lines/tourists everywhere. Luckily, we are freakish planners & we had bought tickets in advance to the major attractions we wanted to visit, while Nick rubbed it in to anyone that would listen that he wasn't waiting in the obnoxious lines (I would have stepped up the job, but he took care of it so well).

The trip was fabulous, we ate amazingly well, drank delicious beers & knocked a few more places off our "to-do" list (which continues to grow despite all the valiant effort we've made this year)!