Belgium, Paris, Luxembourg, Germany

Well, it has been a very busy week for me. I have a colleague from the States in town. She had never been to Europe and I was in need of a travel partner. This made for many jokes at my expense because her Husband will surely punch me in the adams apple when I return to Tahoe. I worked last Saturday but had a bank holiday on Monday and this Saturday was the first since February without the need for OT. So...here is the travelogue.

Sunday, we drive to Belgium. First stop is Ghent for a Harley Davidson t-shirt for Julie. They were having a rally...we were the only people in the store not wearing leather. Next stop was Brugges with its small streets, narrow canals, chocolate shops and waffle stands. We took a canal tour bought some chocolate and headed to Antwerp. In Antwerp we found an amazing carnival and let me tell you what. They do carnivals in Europe like we "used" to do in the states. Seriously, I think they shipped all of the "legal liability" rides over here..turns out that these are the most fun. Seriously, they might have a few people loose a finger but they don't let it stand in the way of fun. We rode tons of rides, some of them "upside down rides", had some cotton candy, beers and then pounded out the 1.5 hour drive back to Venlo. Antwerp was a great city. I will be going back. It is much different than Amsterdam but both are fantastic. Monday, we took the train to Dusseldorf for a walk along the river and some good beer drinking. My developing beer gut is certainly courtesy of the beer, fried food and long work hours. I will be finding some more time for running next week! But speaking of this, I am now cracking another beer. Its from "Palm" which is a nice amber Belgian beer. I must note that their bottles here are more substantial than ours (they re-use them) but it is a difficult transition because of the weight difference. I always expect to have a few slugs left but the extra weight of the thicker glass leaves me tipping the bottle further and further with my only reward being dissatisfaction. This post is just getting started.

I shall digress for a moment. I have now had some time to see Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. I love getting back to Holland. Seriously, the Dutch have a pretty good handle on the good life. I love the bikes everywhere and street side cafes. I like watching people try to strap a bag of potato chips to a bike rack and girls in short skirts rolling through the mall on their way to a night of revelry. I like that I can wear to Jeans to work every day and it isn't breaking the rules. I like that the lawyers don't run everything. No one wears helmets, kids can play free, no one worries about germs, people live life freely and openly. We say that America is about freedom but we seem to loose little bits of freedom every day. Libertarians...Unite!

Now back to the travel. We put in a hard week at work with more progress. On time delivery is up and overtime is down. We were rewarded with Saturday off. Julie and I took off for Paris with nothing but the car and a hotel reservation. We checked into the airport Hilton and headed into the city on the Metro. We started at Notre Dame and our impeccably good timing begins. We wait in line for 20 minutes and literally, 5 seconds after the downpour begins we enter the church....perfect. I am a big promoter of "once you see a church in Europe, you have seen all of the churches in Europe" So for Julie she at least say one of the best. Blah blah balh..yes it was nice. The crepe afterwards was better. We next walked to the Louvre, didn't go in but the outside is amazing too and going in....well lets just say that you could spend 4 days in there and not be complete. So we kept walking through the gardens of the Louvre. Unbeknownst to me, these are the same gardens where my mother spent an entire day drinking wine and eating french bread with a friend rather than seeing Paris on her visit decades ago.....so that is where I get it from!!!!!

We continued to the Champs Elyeses and began walking to the Arc de Triumph. I was imagining the Tour de France riders streaking past when we saw what was seriously the most ridiculous Ambercrombie and Fitch store in the world...or least in Paris. I could not believe it. I saw these huge gates on the street, with a long alley of ivy covered walls behind and a bunch of frat looking boys guarding both sides of the gate. I stopped and joked that it was some prep-school fraternity private party. And then I smelled the distinct aroma of the A&F cologne. There was an effing line to enter the gold crusted gates of the Paris A&F store. I threw up in the nearest trash can, walked into the store and bough an XXL t-shirt which turned out to be too small for me. We finally make it to the arch which was..i must say...bigger than I expected. Blah blah blah, we enjoyed it magnificence and started our walk of triumph to the Eiffel tower.

This was a fantastic sight. For what is essentially a useless structure, it is a magnificent sight. We walked under, used the rest rooms and decided it was dinner time....and wine time...and cheese time. We grabbed a touristy motorcycle cab and asked to be taken back to the Champs Elyses. We jumped out half way there to find some nice places on the side streets. We started a wine crawl enjoying wine and cheese plates as we worked out way through the back streets. The Eiffel Tower is really magnificent at night. We took a late night cab back to the hotel.

Wow...am I still typing....almost done. Today (Sunday) we decided to bail on the big city of Paris (checked the box) and head for some smaller towns. We decided to explore Luxembourg and its mysterious valleys and Castles. This is a beautiful country. For being very small it had much to offer. There were many picturesque rolling fields eliciting memories of Tour de France TV coverage and amazing valleys with huge castles perched on towering hills. We stopped in Vianden for dinner, ice cream and coffee. We had some nice quiche and the strangest dish I have come across yet....Halved tomatoes, topped with raw baby shrimp, basil and mayonnaise. Its like a blind person was working in the kitchen. The day was getting late and I had already run about 100 Euros through my company gas card so it was time to head back to Holland. I dropped a deuce in Luxembourg and we started off. We did this via the autobahn where my little 4 cylinder just eeked out 100mph. Seriously, the last 1mph was in doubt...Julie was not comfortable with this scenario so I pulled her back to a steady 80mph. We were still getting passed. Which brings me to another digression. On our two day trip, we saw 6 Ferrari's, 2 Lamborghini's, at least 4 Maserati's and some other exotic car that I couldn't recognize. The Euro is way too strong people, its time to bring the Dollar back! Libertarians Unite!...did I say that already...opps....how about AMERICA!

Ok...wow, my fingers hurt and my beer is getting warm. I am going to bed. Next on my list is a trip to Denmark and maybe Norway...stay tuned.