Rotterdam

 We arrived in Rotterdam October 1. We decided to visit the city because it was bombed flat during WWII and completely rebuilt. It has lots of modern skyscrapers, so is extremely different than Amsterdam.

We found this bench on our first walk. It was very neat because the 'art' (pictured below) above the water stumped us. We think it was an innovative way to keep seagulls and poop off the benches and walking paths.

The famous Erasmus bridge.

 We happened to run into a parade on our walk through the town. All of the bands were great.

October 2 we went on a river cruise of the Rotterdam port, it is the third largest in the world.

October 3 we took a day trip to Den Haag to go to the beach. Although it took us most of the day getting to the beach, it was beautiful and well worth it.

Rotterdam has some strange buildings, including these cube houses.

Every time we met someone from Holland and we told them we were going to Rotterdam they had the same response: 'Why?'. It was an unusual city and definitely not our favourite, so we are glad to be going back to Amsterdam.

Fun In Gothenburg

We arrived in Gothenburg September 15. Accommodations in Sweden are expensive so we opted to stay in a hostel. This meant it was back to bunk beds, and yes this was the entire room. Think of a prison cell designed by Ikea.

Even though the quarters were tight we stayed in the hostel the entire evening because I was booking the last of the accommodations for our trip.

September 16 we went on a canal cruise. The water level was so high that for part of the tour we had to sit on the floor, otherwise we would hit our heads on the bridges. Kind of looks like the hostel, doesn't it?

The tour was very informative and a good way to see the city. Here is a picture of the 'fish church'. It was built to be a fish market, but the only experience the architect had was with building churches.

A pretty picture from the cruise.

Since we went to the amusement park in Copenhagen we thought that one amusement park was enough. We were wrong. When we were looking at things to do in Gothenburg we discovered that the amusement park had 3 rollercoasters, one of which was wooden, so we had to go.

Here is the wooden rollercoaster, 'Balder', the best rollercoaster I have ever been on.

The park from above.

This rollercoaster was really cool because it shot you out of the gate (0 to 75 km/h in 2 seconds) and the momentum carries you through the whole ride.

This is the other half of the park where the 3rd rollercoaster is, as well as a ride that shoots you up really fast, one that shoots you down really fast, and a giant 'big kid swing'.

The amusement park was AMAZING! It was the best park we have been to and it was especially good because there were no line-ups the entire time we were there. Plus neither of us felt sick from the rides!

September 17 we went to 'Universeum', which was similar to our science center. We had so much fun, but once again it seemed that we didn't quite fit in. For some reason there were a bunch of kids!!

Here is Andrew and his 'new friends' making bubbles.

I WAS making bubbles, but some stupid kid (the one across from Andrew in the green) kept popping my bubbles so I left. Where are the parents of these savages?

Then we found puzzles!

Puzzles done... except the one I'm working on. I'm sure it was the hardest puzzle.

Finally done!

Then Andrew found the neatest thing. It was a room with a bunch of lasers running from wall to wall.  The objective was for you to go from one side of the room to the other without touching them (like in the movie Entrapment). Here I am going across the room.

Andrew's turn. He 'danced' through it. Unfortunately the video didn't turn out. Here he is about to jump over a few lasers.

We had so much fun in Gothenburg. Hopefully we will have as much fun in Stockholm.

Chocolate, Cruise & Sweat

We spent the last few days in Cologne Germany. Andrew and I both had a cold for the first couple of days so we took it easy at the beginning of the week.

July 6, we took a spin around the city and book our next couple of weeks in Germany.

We walked along the Rhein River and went to the "Hohenzollern Brucke". It is a bridge with a bunch of locks on it. Couples come to the bridge and attach a 'love lock' to it and throw the key in the river. Romantic, i guess... if you're into that kind of thing. Some people went all out and got their names engraved on the locks, while others used permanent markers.

July 7 we were feeling better and so we took the city by storm. We climbed up the cathedral (near 500 steps) to get a better view of the city.

Then we went to the Lindt chocolate factory. WOW!! Upon entry we got a free chocolate and then we got to taste chocolate out of a huge chocolate fountain, Andrew and I managed to sample the chocolate fountain twice. It made me miss the chocolate chip muffins we were getting in Ireland from Dunnes!

Then we went to a big city park to read/nap (me/Andrew... he always seems to be napping, actually he is trying to nap on the train right now as I am writing). The park was huge and really beautiful.

Afterwards we went to find a pub to watch Germany vs. Spain. All the pubs were really busy and everyone was dressed up in Germany colours, jerseys, etc. We ended up finding a pub and spent the night cheering for Germany and enjoying German beer (a little too much)... though nothing compares to Guinness. We were sad that Germany lost, but now we have a reason to watch the game Saturday (for third place). Plus, I really want the Netherlands to win the Cup on Sunday. After the game we walked back to the hotel. We passed the cathedral and Andrew managed to snap some good pics (some were a little blurry, I suggested that this was because of too many beers, Andrew prefers to think that it is because of the slow shutter speed of the camera).

July 8 (yesterday) we took a river cruise along the Rhein from Rudesheim to Koblenz... which was free with our train passes, which made us REALLY happy!

A lot of the time Andrew and I look around and feel really out of place. We always seem to be doing things that people aged 60 or 70 + are doing. So of course we were on this river cruise with people aged 60 or 70 + and to top it off they were all southern Americans, to make it even worse... they were TEACHERS (like Brian, ewww!!!). The southern Americans are usually quite entertaining... in small doses. For example one of the ladies would yell out: 'Castle alert' when we would see a castle (which was every couple of minutes). Also they seemed to be extremely confused about which stop they were suppose to get off at and kept talking about it (in their southern accents of course, which Andrew is getting pretty good at mimicking). I'm pretty sure some of them were so worried about which stop they should be getting off at that they forgot to enjoy the view. Others were entertaining because of their wardrobe selection. I am not one to be critical of what other people are wearing, considering I am wearing sweatpants (or maybe even worse, lululemon outfits) everyday, but oh my god!!! All of these people (mostly women, although some we couldn't tell their gender) were wearing ugly visors, their pants were pulled up to their nipples and of course they were wearing monstrous fanny packs (the ones that hold multiple water bottles). This is what we were dealing with:

The castles were really beautiful and there were a ton of them!

We were on the cruise for 4 hours, and by looking at the pictures it looks like it was a nude cruise.

My excuse: I really am wearing clothes, but I was working on my tan so I had my dress pulled up and straps down.

It was very hot out yesterday (around 30 degrees), but being on the river we were enjoying the breeze. It wasn't until we docked in Koblenz that I noticed the heat. Most days it is so hot that when we get back from being out and about we are totally disgusting and need a shower. Yesterday was no exception.

In order to save a few bucks of course we opted not to take the bus from the dock to the train station. So we are walking (for about 20-25 minutes) in the crazy heat and just dripping. We looked especially bad yesterday because we put on sunscreen. I thought that once we got on the train we would cool down because the majority of the trains have AC, but of course, not the one that we caught! So on the train we continued to get more disgusting.

It is important to note that nobody else seems to be affected by the heat, or at least not as much as we are. People on the train were wearing jeans and shirts and didn't appear to be sweating at all.

Too much information? Probably! Andrew and I were reminiscing today about how I was cold in Ireland. What I would give to be cold again! I have begun to take cold showers in the evening and even then I don't cool down enough. Hopefully we will have AC in the room in Berlin, which is our next stop!

Love Love Love Amsterdam!

We had an awesome time in Amsterdam and we are already talking about when we should come back.

One of the first things we noticed is all the bikes. Everyone rides their bikes everywhere, packing everything onto them from groceries to babies (sometimes more than one baby). Below is a picture of a 3 storey bike parkade outside Centraal Station.

Our first day (June 24) Andrew and I stopped into one of Amsterdams' famous coffee shops. It must be a popular spot because there were pictures of both Brad Pitt and George Clooney behind the bar.

Next we went on a canal cruise to learn about Amsterdam.

June 25, we went walking around Amsterdam. It is the most gorgeous city we have ever seen. There are so many beautiful canals (over 100km).

Andrew and I have taken up people watching. We spent some time sitting on this bench watching people go about their daily activities. This is actually a large bridge over a canal. The buildings everywhere are really beautiful.

We also spent part of two afternoons at this bench looking onto a canal watching boat traffic.

This is the canal we were looking onto (our spot was on the left part of the canal where it narrows). Here, we saw a boat collide into the wall, a boat traffic jam and, what made me laugh so hard I cried, 3 girls trying to get down the canal on a paddleboat. They couldn't figure out the steering, so they went swerving from one side of the canal to the other hitting the walls. At one point they thought they had it figured out, and started to clap and cheer, only to find themselves spinning into a wall seconds later. We almost died.

Here is a picture of some of the boat traffic on a bigger canal.

Today we went to the Anne Frank House. It was really interesting to see the house and the memorial. 

We also found the best grocery store of all times called Albert Heijn. We found the best cheese there and baguettes that had just come out of the oven and were still hot. 

Tomorrow we are off to Brussels. We are going to really miss Amsterdam, but we will be back... someday.

The Last Few Days

We have really been enjoying our time in Killarney. The first day that we got here we spent it at the National Park then the next day (May 8) we spent the entire day in the park too. Below are some pictures from the second day spent in the park.

The next day we decided to go on a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry. We were really excited to see the beautiful landscape, what we didn't really know is that we were stuck in a tourist trap. The first two stops we made were at the most random places: a Bog Museum and a sheep hearding place. At both places you had to pay for admission and both times we were stopped for at least 3/4 of an hour. We paid for neither.

Andrew and I still had fun though. Andrew nicknamed an American tourist on our bus "old man steal me money" because he and his wife paid to get into all these stupid places that the bus stopped and bought other stupid things. Andrew and I were trying to figure out how to scam "old man steal me money" into giving us money. No such luck.

Here we are outside at one of the stops.

Ring of Kerry.

Ring of Kerry.

The next day (May 9) we didn't have any plans so we decided to go to Cork because we read that it is "The People's Capital" (whatever that means). So we got to Cork, it was pretty cold outside (even for Andrew), and we didn't really know where to go or what to see. We went to the tourist office to see what sites we wanted to see in Cork and discovered that we didn't really want to see anything in Cork. So instead of getting on the next train we decided to go to an old church and to a park. The park was really nice and we really enjoyed it but we discovered that we hated Cork. There was dog poop (I'm assuming it was dog poop, some it was questionable) everywhere!! Needless to say, Andrew and I got out of Cork as soon as we could. Now that I think about it we probably spent more time waiting for the train and on the train than actually in Cork. Nevertheless, it was a great day, and we had lots of fun.

Jack this picture is for you. Here is how they do construction (and demolition) in Cork.

(I just wanted to say that I really wanted to take a picture of some dog poop because that is how I will always remember Cork but Andrew wouldn't let me and he was holding the camera.)

So today we thought we would rent a couple of bikes and go into another (bigger) part of the National Park. 

We went North of Killarney to a lookout to have a really good view of part of the National park, but I was too captivated by two horses to really have a look at the view.

Here is picture Andrew took from the lookout.

Then we went to the South to see Torc waterfalls. On the little climb to the waterfalls we were talking to a guy who asked us where we were from, and when we said Canada he said, 'Don't you have Niagra Falls in Canada? Well this won't be as good as that.'

He was right, why did we even bother?? Ha ha.

Although they weren't quite the same size as Niagra Falls, they were still really pretty.

The real story to the bike ride is that after 10 minutes on the bikes I didn't want to bike anymore. See the problem with having a 5 star hostel is that I never want to leave. Today I would have preferred to have gone to Buy-Low (the grocery store here is actual called Dunnes) and purchased a couple containers of chocolate chip muffins and ate them while watching multiple episodes of Glee. Since we had already rented the bikes and because Andrew was having a good time I tried to be a good sport. Unfortunately for Andrew, that didn't last for too long. By the time we made it to the falls I was done, it was time to go back to the hostel, but I guess I didn't communicate this to Andrew because he proceeded to take us in the opposite direction of the hostel and on a route that the only way out was to go back the way we came. Half way through this new little adventure I tried to quit, by telling Andrew that I was not going to bike anymore (I'm not sure how I was going to get from the path back to the hostel because I was not going to bike or walk back... I know the thought of calling a taxi entered my head, but I don't think taxis pick people up on bike and walking paths) but he was so far ahead of me that he couldn't hear me yelling 'I QUIT!'

After I had finished throwing a tantrum we proceeded to go further away from the hostel so that Andrew could go to the washroom, but then finally we were able to go back to the hostel. I am glad to say that we made it back to the hostel and now looking back on today... I think it was a pretty good day and I think I actually liked the bike ride, but we definitely aren't renting bikes tomorrow.

Andrew and I are still having a great time in Killarney but we will be packing up the day after tomorrow to head out to who knows where. We are homeless as of right now because we haven't decided where we want to go before we meet up with Mom and Jack on the 15th.