Once again I apologize, this post was supposed to go up a couple of hours ago, but I got carried away with making cookies (the first thing I have officially baked since I've been in England) and finishing off The Goblet of Fire and now a call from one of my families:D
I must also forgive my outfits. I could only take one jacket and scarf, so I'm wearing the same outer layer every day... I promise that each of the days are separate and I changed my clothes underneath!
So...Tuesday morning started really early. We woke up and headed to the bus stop at 3 in the morning. I was still pretty tired from my weekend excursion, so I wasn't very talkative, plus it was REALLY early. We caught our flight at about 7 to head to Brussels and I slept for the majority of the flight. Once we landed we caught a train to the inner city and headed to our hostel. Or we tried to. We (or more specifically I) got mixed up with the map and headed the opposite direction we should have to go to the hostel, but thankfully after walking about a mile we got pointed in the right direction by one of the locals and were able to leave our bags in the baggage room.
Because we missed our 11:00 morning tour, we were able to relax and explore the area until the second tour started at 2:15. We explored the center and found the things that Belgium is famous for! their chocolate, waffles and frites!
This shopping area had a lot of stores (like 50 or so) and every other store was a chocolate store!!! I was in heaven even if I didn't buy any.
They had really cute animals in some of these chocolate shops. I probably would have bought them, but I wouldn't have been able to make myself eat them! So I took a picture because it would definitely last longer!
And because you haven't gotten a history lesson for me in a while, here you go! The history of a portion of Brussels! We met in the Market Place in the center of Brussels which used to be...you guessed it! A market place where the traders would gather from around the world to sell and buy goods. Our guide told us that Brussels used to be a key trading location in Northern Europe because all the trading countries had easy access from the north and south.
This building used to be the Grand-Place where the Holy Roman Emperor lived during the early 16th century. But before it became the King's house it was a place where bakers sold their bread, so some of the Dutch called this building the "Broodhuis" or the bread house. After it was a bakery, it was used by the Duke of Brabant for administrative purposes and was renamed "Masion du Roi" or house of Royals by the French. Then when Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, it became the "Kings House".
This building is now the town hall of Brussels and no, the picture isn't off center, the building is actually off center. Its actually kind of annoying! But like many large buildings in Europe, they ran out of funds while building. So it is more than likely that it is off center because of the different building periods throughout history. There only used to be 8 statues on the entire facade, but when the building was destroyed in 1695, they added more and now there are over 50 (I think).
I'm not exactly sure what this building was, our guide didn't really talk about it, but there was a lot of gold on the facade.
This little fountain is called the Manneken Pis. No one in Brussels really knows where he came from, but at certain times of the year he can be seen dressed up or pissing beer. Apparently during a time when the French marched through Brussels, the soldiers stole him and took him back to France, but the man in charge was afraid of causing a war, sent him back dressed as the highest ranking French officer. So when soldiers from the French army passed through Brussels, they had to salute him when they walked passed.
When we reached the halfway point of our tour when we took a break for 20 minutes, the rest of the girls I was with decided to head back to the hostel because it was a long day and we were all pretty tired. But have no fear I stuck with it because I wanted to see more of this gorgeous city!
This is the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, but most of the locals just call it the Gudula Cathedral. There are two very odd things about this cathedral: the first is the resemblance to Notre Dame in Paris. Surprisingly, this was not coordinated, they were both built during the same time period. The second is that while is has been claimed to be "finished" it doesn't look like it! There are many windows that aren't filled in with glass, but the people funding the building were tired of paying for it and declared it finished.
We then travelled to Brussels Park, which was created by Freemasons.
In the middle of the park sits a fountain (that runs during the summer I'm sure), and as you can see statues surround the fountain and are placed around the park. I'm not exactly certain who the statues are of, but there are a lot of them. There isn't a lot to say about this park, other than if you look it up on google maps, the walkways in the park make the Freemason compass.
May I also add here that Belgium is the only country in the world that is run by 4, yes FOUR different governments! And recently, they broke the Guinness Book of Records for the longest time without government. Apparently there was a mix up last year during elections (politics, not my area) and it took a long time to get sorted, Belgium was without a working government for 289 days.
We then reached the end of the tour, passing the Palace of Brussels where the Royal family used to live (not anymore)
If you look very closely, you can see the Belgium flag at the top of the palace, this is to indicate that the Royal Family is in the country. Our guide assured us that he's lived there for 15 years and has never once seen the flag taken down. This is of course where the King meets all sort of important people, other royalty, member of other countries and such.
Although we didn't walk down to it, our guide pointed out the Palace of Justice at the end of the street from the Royal Palace. (I walked down to it later after the tour had ended)
This is the largest Palace of Justice in the world. If you removed the spires on the Cathedral, it would be able to fit into the entry hall of this building and this is 3x the size of the Royal Palace. This building was so big that they had to remove houses around it, dislodging 3000 families. The Palace of Justice took 20 years to build and about $300 million to make and only 10% of the actual building gets used!!! The entry hall is so large that it takes 5 minutes to walk across and a prisoner once escaped because of it. Our guide also informed us that they have been resurfacing the building for over 35 years, he joked that the scaffolding itself needs a remodel.
This was the view that I found off to the right of Palace of Justice.
After my side detour of the Palace of Justice, I hurried back to the hostel to meet up with my group and see what we were going to do for dinner! The 5 of us were staying in a mixed room of 6, so when I got back I was able to meet our roommate. A guy who lived in Texas and worked for NASA, he had decided to take a detour on his way back from a conference in Moscow. He came out with us to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where the pour waitress didn't speak a lick of English, so we had to just point at what we wanted. It was really good and surprisingly pretty cheap!
The next morning (Wednesday) we slept in a bit and decided to go explore the area some more! We got more waffles and it was delicious. (May I at this time point out that we walked over 40 miles this past week, so I was able to eat all of these goodies without gaining too much weight)
While seeing the view of the city the day previous, I had found a new place that I wanted to explore. It was two miles away from our hostel, but I thought it was worth the walk! While we didn't have a tour guide telling us about this building, I did some research on the history of the Basilica.
This is the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. This was built by the Catholic Church, started in 1905 and finished after the second World War in 1969, dedicated to the Sacred Heart and built in the likeness of the Basilica found in Paris. Inside are a restaurant, two museums, a theater and a Catholic radio station. I think the best part about traveling to the Basilica was that a man let us pet his golden retriever puppy in the park on the way. It made our day:D
We finished the day by taking the girls to the Royal Palace, the Delirium Cafe (apparently famous for the amount of alcohol choices they give), and more waffles!
The next morning was another early one, we were headed to Amsterdam. We arrived at the station on early and stopped in Starbucks to get some breakfast and realized that we were in the wrong train station to go to Amsterdam!!! Thankfully we realized with enough time to spare and took a different train to get us to the right station and then boarded the right train to the Netherlands!
The first thing we wanted to do when we got to Amsterdam was head to the Anne Frank House, but when we arrived, the line was really long, so we decided to head to our hostel instead. We then met our walking tour at the National Monument, which was just a tall building like the Washington Monument and for some reason I didn't take a picture of it. We met the 6th member of our group who had just arrived from Denmark and we started our tour!
Actually, the first place we stopped on our tour was the red light district, which, our guide told us, is the safest place in Amsterdam. So yes, prostitution is legal in Amsterdam. Our guide told us several times that one big policy in Amsterdam is tolerance. The three parts of tolerance in Amsterdam consisted of: 1. makes money 2. it is not obvious or displayed openly and 3. it doesn't hurt anyone. So the members of Amsterdam made prostitution legal to bring a sum of money into the government.
There is even an old church located in the center of the red light district. The brothels were actually built up around the church because the people figured that they would make it easier to go "repent" after visiting (more like just passing money to a priest to ask for forgiveness from God). And that's all I have to say about that!
The other thing that is tolerated in Amsterdam is weed. Remember the three parts of tolerance? Well technically Weed is illegal, it was made illegal by the United Nations because they were worried that it was the gateway to the abuse of "hard" drugs such as Meth, Crack, Cocaine etc. Surprisingly, weed is very easy to come by in this city. You can visit a "coffeeshop" and purchase your choice of products. While it is still illegal to grow and sell your own plants, if a cop sees you smoking it outside a shop, they won't arrest you. Another surprising fact is the global percentage of people who smoke weed is 6%, Amsterdam's percentage is only 5%.
Ok moving on to more pleasant subjects.
The name Amsterdam came from the Dam that was built on the Amstel that formed man made canals throughout the city. Sometimes Amsterdam is called "Venice of the North", but our guide assured us that Amsterdam was built before Venice and hence Venice should be known as "Amsterdam of the South". There was not a lot of room in the city, so many of the buildings are very tall and narrow, apparently when building many of the buildings you were taxed on the width of the building, not the square footage. Because the buildings are so narrow, it is impossible to move furniture up and down the stairs, so each building has a hook at the top. These hooks were used with a pulley to lift large furniture in and out of the top stories. This is also why many of the buildings are tilted slightly forward, because if the buildings were flat, the furniture or the building would be damaged while lifting heavy objects. So to avoid the cost of damages, the buildings are tilted slightly forward! (although this could have been easily fixed with a longer rod at the top)
This is the Amsterdam Palace where the Royal Family used to live, but once again don't live anymore. This building was built in the late 17th century and actually used to be white at some point, but the weather has gotten to it. In the early 19th century, Napoleon's brother became King of the Netherlands and the people really disliked him because he was French. Apparently one time his advisors told him it would be a good idea to speak to the people in Dutch to get them to like him, but instead of saying Dutch for "I am your King!" he spoke Dutch for "I am your Rabbit!" (I guess the two words are pretty close in Dutch) So the people of Holland had a rabbit for a king for a period of time!
This tour was pretty short and we were able to head back to the hostel at a pretty early time. Our hostel was very close to the national "I Amsterdam" sign, so we headed in that direction to get some pictures!
The rest of the evening we wandered around and saw the sights. I really loved this city and I hope that I have the opportunity to go back during the summer when the leaves are coming out on the trees and all the flowers are blooming.
The next morning (Friday) we got up early to go the Anne Frank House to skip the long line we saw yesterday. But when we arrived there was already a line formed. We waited in line for about an our to get into the house and it started to rain. Thankfully, they brought out umbrellas to those of us who had none in line. After about an hour we were able to go through the House and it was amazing. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I think they have some online if you want to look and see the inside! I cannot believe 8 people were able to live inside such a tiny space for 2 years!
They had quotes from Anne's diary and from Otto (Anne's Father) and the helpers (the people who helped hide the Frank family in the house). It was a very touching experience and I definitely recommend going for those of you who are ever in Amsterdam! (I found out afterwards that you can reserved tickets online and skip waiting in line, which I also recommend) Although I was quite annoyed because there was a group behind us who kept talking throughout the tour!!! UGH!!! When you go to a place of remembrance you're not supposed to talk! I couldn't believe it!
I split off from the group afterwards with a promise to meet up for lunch, I was on the lookout for a fabric shop. (I'm getting fabric from every country to make a quilt when I get home) I wasn't able to find what I was looking for in the first place I looked, but I headed back to Pancake corner to meet up with the rest of the girls.
On the way back from the first fabric shop I passed the Bloemenmarkt or the Flower Market, the worlds largest floating flower market! Unfortunately, because it's still winter, they weren't selling any tulips, but they were selling a ton of bulbs from all over the world!
I really really want to go back during the summer, although it will probably be really crowded.
We met up at the Pancake Corner and had some famous Pancakes (they are pretty much crepes, but not folded up)
My pancake had ice cream, whipped cream and strawberry sauce. Three of the girls in the group got the banana, whipped cream and chocolate syrup pancake. They were pretty tasty, but expensive.
All of us split up again, 4 of them went to the Flower market, PC and I headed towards the Van Gogh museum and we promised to meet up at the hostel at 5. She ended up going to the museum, I walked passed the museum to another fabric shop I had looked up. The fabric shop was in an area of town that had it's own little market. They were selling lots of different foods, clothes and nic nacs. I found this awesome quote painted on a wall close to the market.
After I got my fabric, I headed back to the Van Gogh museum which I was excited for! We weren't able to take pictures of any of his work, but they had a large muriel of Sunflowers which I did take a picture of.
This museum told Van Gogh's story of his life. From his birth to his death and all the people and paintings that influenced him over his life. Some of the pictures that were there was his Potato eaters, another version of Sunflowers, lots of self portraits, Bedroom in Arles, and his Cherry Blossom painting.
I headed back to the hostel around 3 and read HP #4 until about 4:15 and then took a quick nap on the couch while I waited for everyone to show up. We then gathered all of our luggage and headed back to the train station. We stopped for frites on the way at the place that was supposedly the best place in Amsterdam according to TripAdvisor. While the frites were alright, I really liked the sauce on top that I got, it was called Andolousesaus, which was almost a spicier version of In n Out's sauce.
Afterwards we caught a train back to the airport and from their our flight back. We arrived home around 1:00 in the morning and I fell asleep until about 11:45 in the morning. Saturday was my lazy day, I was finally able to Skype my mom for the first time in forever and my sister as well!
Today was a good day! I got my first calling in my new ward! My first calling other than a Primary teacher! I am now the newest member of the Activities Committee and I can't wait to start!
It's getting late and unfortunately I have school in the morning:( so until next time!
