Amsterdam & Belgium

Here´s the quick overview of what we´ve been up to while in Amsterdam and Belgium...we´re now on our second German city (Cochem in the Mosel Valley and now in Badan Baden near the Black Forest) but I´m going to try to summarize in order. Please excuse weird typos...the keyboard is laid out with important differences that create some odd letter substitutions and I might not catch them all.

Amsterdam
- Made it to our first b&b after being stuck on the train
for 45 minutes for brake work within sight of the station (that was the most irritating part)
- had a hot buggy room and got minimal sleep (jet lag, heat, and bugs)
but location was great. The title of our review for this B&B will be `bring your own mesquito netting´
- visited museums (Riks and Van Gogh) and took a peaceful (though not very informative) canal tour by boat, then had a nice dinner at a place called Balthazars (pictures of most food to appear later)
- biked in pastoral Weesp, Tracy fell off her bike while stopping, resulting in minimal damage that is healing nicely (lightly sprained ankle, some colorful bruises, and a cranked neck)
- visited niciest library ever for a great view of Amsterdam and had a
snack at the cafe on top floor + I´ll try to find a link later but this is truly the most amazing public library with lots of computers for internet access, a piano in the lobby that people would stop and place (usually quite well), two cafes (top and bottom floors), lots of places to sit and read, and of course lots of books

Pictures from the canal tour

Belgium
- took train to Brussels, walked around, saw peeing statue and Grand
Palace Square, had frites with mayo and currz & chocolate + yum!



-continued on to nicer Brugge (cooler weather, nice b&b, charm)
-got our first good night's sleep, climbed the bell tower (see Tony in front of the largest bell), wandered around town, saw a couple special churches one which has a madonna by
michaelango, carillon performance that we had looked forward to was cut short by a band concert in another part of town


- Flemish stew (carbonade) & salad for dinner tonight at a tourist
place... Blah, but we had the whole range here in Brugge from fancy to
solid local spot to tonights tourist trap. The street waffle with
nutella we had was great :)
-laundry (did you know that you can buy and drink beer at the
laundromat here from the same machine as the detergent?)

- the long days are great for being a tourist. It's light from like 5
am to11 pm

I´ll try to write up our first days in Germany soon! Hope everone is doing well!