Forget Us Nicht

Friday, January 27, 2012

Hamsterdam

Hello Everybody,

Well… ‘L’ surprised me for my B-day by taking me to Amsterdam with a couple of friends of ours. The trip was a blast we left early Friday and stayed until Sunday evening.

We walked around town and even went to a couple of places. Such as, the Anne Frank Museum and a super cool local district that everyone told us we couldn’t miss.

Below are pictures of our exploits.

The hotel

Taking the Tram…which travels at an alarming speed.

Heading towards the local center market

Something for the VanVeen part of the Family

I just couldn’t get enough of the buildings. Since Amsterdam wasn’t bombed, during WW2, many of the buildings are super old - dating back to 1486. And many of the buildings have sunk and shifted because I believe Amsterdam was built on a marsh. Thus if you look close at the buildings in the pictures…you should notice things not so “square”.

the canals were great as well.

Can you see the supporting beam in between these two buildings (in the picture below)

Ah Yes!!! the outdoors market.

So many Mushrooms!

Anyone for some raw Mackerel…apparently it’s a local favorite and I have to say it was quite tasty.

What did you say?

Anyone need to stop at the bank?

Below you can see L freezing as I ask her to pose in front of the old city gate - that is now a restaurant.

…And the Red-light District.

Way more tame than I had envisioned

Fastfood for the late night munchies… L sure seemed perplexed…we don’t get to see vast amounts of junk food on display in such a manner…well maybe back in the states we do.

Sunday morning…a bit of scones and clotted cream…a bit of coffee and a bit of tea…sooooo good.

Say goodbye everybody!!!

Until next time, that’s all folks.

hugs,

M&L

Friday, January 20, 2012

Quick Recap of 2011 X-mas

Hello Everybody,

Well…we’re into the New Year about a month now and I haven’t had much time to filter all our holiday pictures – there was a combined total of 1052 pictures we took over the break.

As some of you may know ‘T’ was here for xmas and new years and of course we did some sightseeing. This year we focused more on German Christmas Markets – we visited : Erlangen, Nuremberg, Bamberg, Rothenburg, Wurzburg, Munich, Berlin and Dresden.

So I’m sharing a bit of each visit - enjoy the pictures. By the way, I really like T’s camera.

Erlangen

I think I forgot to take pictures and this is the only one I found in T’s pictures

Nuremberg

Nuremberg’s Christmas Market is one of the biggest and most visited by tourist in all of Germany…so I’ve heard.

Gluhwein anyone

Got to have a Drei und Weckla

and some bier

Bamberg

I had to make sure the guy wasn’t still alive and needed help getting up.

Rothenburg

L, not sure what to do

Here we go she’s on target now

Oh yes!!! Schneeballchen (snowball) = deep fried dough strips shaped into a ball and then covered with all sorts of yummy sweet treats…warning!!! only buy in Rothenberg all others are cheap imitations…you’ve been warned.