Well, we still have writeups to do on Brussels, Metz, and Paris, as well as actually posting pictures, etc…  I suspect that that will take some time, though.  Just wanted to put down a few thoughts upon arriving home.

1.  Everything here is so enormous! 

2.  As an extension of #1 – I read a quote recently that said the best part about travelling was coming home and seeing everything with new eyes.  I’ve not been very good about that in the past.  I hope to be better this time.

3.  Now that there’s no wedding or honeymoon planning to do (although still some follow-up, but nothing crazy), I’m going to have a fair amount of time I didn’t have before.  I’m thinking fitness, music, and languages are going to be priorities for me this next few months.  After spending a few days resting and getting back into the swing of things, of course.

Have to be quick, since we only get 15 minutes of free internet. Terminal 3 at Paris – Charles de Gaulle officially blows. We’re eating a very sad last meal in Paris – a hard, stale ham and cheese sandwich from the only place to offer food in this entire “terminal”. We had to walk about 10 minutes outside across roads and stuff to even get here, and it looks like we might have to board a little tram just to get to the plane. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, we tried to keep up with the posting on this trip, but we’re entirely successful. Write ups on Metz and Paris, and pictures and other fill-ins from previous legs when we return and catch up on sleep.

See you soon!

Well, not anymore, since we’re perpetually behind on this thing.  But hey – the title needed to be used.

I’ve taken up the posting duties for the evening, since Bruce is feeling a bit under the weather (as you may have noticed from the moderately rambling nature of his last post.  Also, we’re writing this on a tiny screen that hides about half of what you type, so he gets a bit of slack).

Man, we’re so going to have to go back and write more once we’re not exhausted, and add pictures, etc…  It’s tough to try to write just a summary, but it’s tougher to find the time/energy for anything else.

To recap/clarify his Amsterdam post, we went to the Rijksmuseum, took a canal boat tour, went through the Albert Cuypt market, and generally just walked and explored a lot (and took a tonne of photos).  After a couple of days we took the train down to The Hague to explore the surrounding area a it.  We spent most of the day in Delft, which had the freakiest church I’ve ever seen, in that it looks like about 10000000 tonnes of masonry that could fall ON YOUR HEAD AT LITERALLY ANY MOMENT.  This one needs the pictures, really.  Also took an awesome tour of a pottery factory – wow…that came out sounding much much worse than it was.  Seriously, it was very cool.  We got to see how they handmake/paint the Delftware the area is famous for.  SCA geeks in the crowd, remind me to tell you if you’re interested…  We also got giant Dutch pancakes, although I sadly couldn’t taste mine as well as I would’ve liked due to the sinus infection that finally hit.  *sigh*

We took a train then to Zoetermeer, which seemed weirdly in the middle of nowhere, for a Firewind concert.  The venue was *wicked*, ad the show was a blast.  Both supporting bands were pretty good as well – may have to check out some of their stuff.  Gotta say, though, metal concert for 3-4 hours with a sinus infection is kinda brutal.  Worth it, but brutal.

Said goodbye to The Netherlands the next morning and headed to Bruges with its swans and alcoves.  Sadly, by this point, Bruce was also starting to not feel well (sinus infections shouldn’t be contagious, but…*shrug*), so we were a little bit of a sad pair wandering around the city.  Once we got there.  We were directed to the wrong train, although luckily it went quite close, so we still got there relatively easily.

Still such a beautiful little city.  I didn’t get as many pictures as some places, because I have lots from my previous trip, and it was nice to wander without the camera for a bit.

We did lots of sitting on patios, eating really good food, drinking really good beer, and enjoying the generally beautiful weather.  We did visit a couple of museums and churches, and toured a brewery.  Definitely a mellow point on the trip, though, which we both need.

Now we’re settling in for our first night in Brussels.  I’ll leave the writeup of what we’ve done here for later, since we’ve only just begun…

We did some touristy things here as well, we went into the Rijks Museum (pronounced Smith) to see the many storied works of Rembrandt as we as other featured Dutch painters (look it up) but I found myself drawn more toward the crafts and carvings than the paintings. I think it because so much of the detailing we see is not present on modern decor and sculpture, but

visual imagery  is still all around us online and in print magazine, to me it doesn’t seem as impressive.  Allison points out that if you screw up a painting that you can always paint over it, a sculpture or woodcarving is more permanent. whatever the reason, I much prefer it to paintings of ugly people.

We also took a canal tour that pointed out many interesting dfacts about the city, none of which I can remember at this time, as my head is in a fog from the head cold I have picked up.

The bicycles! The bicycles!  They’re all over the place, littering the streets and sidewalks! You can’t get away from them! They’re everywhere! EVERYWHERE!

Amsterdam is definitely the most foreign of the cities we’ve been in, between the transportation differences (the bikes/scooters/motorcycles get their own lanes here) And with the exception of the most major intersections, right of ways is dealt with by the ‘figure it out where you get there’ method. The buildings, while not only being older that everything in Calgary, are also substantially different than anything in Calgary. Everything in the main core is 3-4 stories high, packed side by side like books on a shelf. The building have a yard arm on the top of each one so major furniture can be pulled up through the outer windows, as the stairs are too narrow to carry things up.  One restaurant we were at had a stairwell so steep  I could stand sideways at the bottom and touch the eighth star at shoulder height without leaning in.  Try it at home!

In addition, everything is so beautifully crafted, we have a hundred photos of masonry, ironwork, sculpture and stained glass, each corner we turned around had another unique piece of art masquerading as an apartment building.  It’s all taken for granted by Europeans like I take for granted washrooms that don’t cause panic attacks.

There are lots of coffee shops here.

We ended up going to an art deco spa to sit in the sauna/steam rooms, much needed after our first week of travel.

More to come…

Did I mention how hot the women in Norway are?

We took an overnight ferry from Oslo down to Copenhagen through the fjords, exceptionally pretty view, whomever  designed the fjords should get some kind of award.  I learned a few things on this trip, one being that the food on the ferry way excellent (mmm, veal is calfalicious) including a buffet highlighted by me making a smoked salmon and scrambled  egg sandwich. The second thing I learned is that I should stay away from any boats that sail on the high seas.  There was some very light choppiness to the water, according to our waitress, which had me popping dramamine like tic tacs.  Bleargh.  A pirate I would not be. We stayed in Copenhagen long enough to say hello goodbye, then took off to the small seaside town of Hornabaek. Why? When looking up Copenhagen  we found reviews like “Amsterdam lite” and the top three things to visit in Copenhagen weren’t actually in Copenhagen.  This became the relax and refresh portion of our trip.

This included eating gigantic pastries from the local bakery, wandering through town and down to the beach for a relaxing stroll, and eating fish from a seaside shack that should have been better than it was.

It also included renting a couple of bike and biking down to Hellsingor to visit Kronborg castle, location of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  I’ll let Allison decribe the biking experience, the terror comes through better in her voice.We were a little late getting to Kronborg so we had to rush through, but it was exceptional to see the magnificent halls, tapestries and wood carved furniture.  They had a few interactive displays including a model of one of the halls with holographic renaissancers cavorting about in costume. Very cool, enjoyable afternoon.

Seriously, he’s not kidding about the women here. And it’s just the women – it’s weird. They’re all thin and blonde and tall and gorgeous, and I’m kind of glad we’re leaving before I develop a complex.

BTW, our hostess (and her neighbours) are awesome! First night here and we were up drinking and talking til 2am. They may be visiting us next year. Fantastic evening, and a perfect example of why staying in impersonal hotels can be overrated.

Holy crap there is a lot of hot women here!!!  I swear every woman here under the age of 35 range from moderately attractive to smoking hot. Every one, I’m not even kidding.

So everything is overpriced as we’d been warned, but the viking ship museum was very cool to see, the folk museum was a little disappointing as as it was poorly organised and not very well described. The Kon-Tiki museum was wicked, we have a new hero in our lives, and his name is Thor Heyerdahl.

Seriously, it’s easier to find Waldo than it is to find an unattractive woman in Oslo.

Things to do while you’re in Norway.  Drink, with Norwegians. But buy duty free when you come in to town don’t drink in the bars. Unless you want to pay $15 a drink. Having said that, we did go to the Aku-Aku tiki bar for one drink. I may have picked up a little something for the bar at home…

Did I mention the hot women? They’re everywhere!

Slept in and missed free breakfast, d’oh! Got decent sleep though, so I can’t complain too much. The Victoria and Albert Museum was exceptional, thought we didn’t have the time or stamina to see it all, the parts we did see was very enjoyable. I think the wrought iron display was my favourite, though mecha-Stephen Hawking was pretty cool. Lots of pics.

We went to Harrod’s, and I got a sense of closure as I finally saw what the end result of the Eaton experiment would have been if Sears’ management wasn’t insane. Saw a mirror/TV, combo. Fantastic stuff.

Saw England v. Wales world cup qualifier.  Some things in point form:

I used to think soccer was dull, until I saw a game in front of 77000 people. Now I know it is.

The English like to sing many songs.  I like the one that goes “nuh nuh nu-nuh na nanuh nu nuh ENGLAND!”

God Save the Queen sounds remarkably like “The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen” Theme.

The didn’t sell beer at the game. There were no vendors of any kind in the stands, the only announcements during the game were goals and red cards, the jumbotron only used to replay exciting moments.  It was a shockingly mellow experience.

Neither set of fans went home happy, the Welsh upset they lost 1-0, the English upset their side played a sloppy, lacklustre game.

London transit does about as good a job you can do moving 77,000 people out of one compact area of the city.

London officials hate garbage cans.  The terrorists have already won.

Woo…long day, late night. Quick post just to get the jist of things down…

We got a bit of a late start, since we were still adjusting schedules, but not too bad. Took the tube down to Westminster, somewhat complicated by the fact there’s tonnes of construction on the Tube due to the upcoming Olympics. Made it, though, and after some wandering around we got on the boat to Greenwich. Got some great photos from the boat I’ll have to upload later. Up to the observatory for a bit, then to the O2 for the British Music Experience. It was okay, but not as good as the Music Experience in Seattle. Bruce was especially saddened, though I’m sure he’ll write about that later. It was still fun, though.

Then lots of wandering through downtown London, a stop for supper (easily one of the weirdest meals I’ve ever had – more on that in a moment), and then walked through Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus before heading home. Weirdest shop? The *4 story* M&M store.

Supper – ugh. I’ll have to write about it another time. Too tired and keyboard is irritating me…

Night!

(Note – this is Allison.  Didn’t realise I was logged in as Bruce…)