The Good, the Bad & the Ugly @ the Market

The Good:

Tulips were on sale: 50 blooms for €5; this is only half of them. I am going to miss having fresh flowers all over the house when we move back to the States.

The Bad:

The muffin man has increased his price from 6 for €2 to 6 for €2.50. He says they're bigger. But let's all be honest, it isn't like I'm going to put the extra 25% back in the bag for next time...So really the muffins now cost an extra €.0833 a piece. Trust me, it adds up at the rate we eat muffins around here.

The Ugly:

I promise you did not want to see a picture of this one. Matt and I really enjoy eating clementines; they are the perfect picnic/train/bus snack - easy to peel and little mess. Apparently it must be getting close to the end of the season and all the clementines at the market looked like they were already molding. I wonder who buys them...

Kinder Surprise

This post is brought to you by Caroline L., who graciously taught me about Kinder Eggs over Skype last night.

Lovely Leuven...Seriously

In a country known for chocolate, that has over 300 micro-brews, and considers waffles acceptable food for three meals a day plus snacks, it is impossible to have a bad visit. We made sure we experienced all three during our visit:

Chocolate

We snuck Galler's chocolate bars into the movie theater - way better than over-priced M&Ms. The dark chocolate with Grand Marnier filling is to die for and the milk chocolate with sweet coffee filling is absolutely delish! (Sorry about the lack of chocolate photos, but we didn't think it was wise to call attention to the fact we were sneaking food into the movie theater.)

Beer
We visited the Domus Restaurant and Brewery, where we sampled all three of their brews: Con Domus, Nostra Domus, and their special winter brew - Engel. My favorite was the Nostra Domus - a dark beer with a light flavor; the Con Domus was too bitter for me.

Waffles
Forget a sandwich for lunch, I enjoyed a Belgian waffle with warm cherries and a side of whip cream. My pants are thankful we aren't living the land of endless waffles.

Moeder Komt

Mom's Whirlwind Tour of Amsterdam:

Mom inspecting bulbs in the floating flower market

Tulips in the flower market
Flower Booth
Mom & me eating raw herring, onions, and pickles

Mom & me "skating" in Vondel Park
Matt & me on a frozen pond in Vondel Park

Mom & me outside in the Rijksmuseum in the sculpture garden

Mom finishing the night with a chocolate waffle

A Visit from Sinterklaas!

Since Sinterklaas knew we would be in Prague on the 5th & 6th, he came a few days early. When we got home from Frisbee on Thursday night we found our shoes filled with traditional Sinterklaas treats! Since we don't have a chimney, he must have crawled through our radiator with his bag of treats. Don't worry, he and his horse were well fed for their trouble since carrots were abundantly stuffed in the shoes (due to them being on sale this week at the Albert Heijn - marketing, anyone?).

MMM! Chocolate Letters, Chocolate Covered Pepernoten, & Almond Pastry Letters

(This is not a holiday where you can wait until the last minute to purchase food & supplies. I mean, how would you explain to your son John that Sinterklaas got him the letter "O" instead of "J"? I bought my letters back in October to make sure I got the correct Dark Chocolate letters.)

Grand Place

We started our visit to Brussels with a trip to the Grand Place - the historical and cultural center of the Belgium capital city and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The square is dominated by the town hall building and surrounded by guild houses built in the 17th century.The guild house on the left was the brewer's house and houses The Museum of the Belgium Brewers today. The museum shows an uninteresting 10 minute English film about beer brewing and has a room full of beer brewing equipment. Perhaps the museum might have been more interesting if the room with the equipment and explanation was not constantly dark due to the film showing in continual repeat. Oh well, the museum was included with the purchase of the Brussels Welcome Card and came with a free beer at the end. It gave us a chance to sample Belgium Paradise beer; we both had the dark and it was quite good.

The Swan house on the left is the former home of the Butchers' Guild. This also the place Karl Marx and Frederick Engels lived when they wrote the Communist Manifesto. Today it is an expensive restaurant.

We overheard a conversation among the statues atop the guild houses.

*based on the Rick Steves Guide Book to Amsterdam, Bruges, & Brussels.

We couldn't leave the square without checking out all the chocolate shops and the Brussels invented pralines (filled chocolates). Our first stop was to window shop at the original Godiva store. We checked out the displays at Nuehaus and Galler along the way, but we chose to buy our chocolates from Leonidas. They may not be handmade but we got a lot more chocolate for our Euro!
We enjoyed munching on the chocolates for the rest of our visit in Brussels.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

I LOVE chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins. Right about Halloween time, I realized I wouldn't be getting any chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins this year for several reasons:

1. I no longer work in the same building as Krisanne (who makes the most wonderful pumpkin muffins)
2. It is cost and time prohibitive for my mother-in-law to send us baked goods this year
3. There are no cans of pumpkin pie filling in the grocery stores here
4. There is no Halloween or Thanksgiving over here, and therefore, none of the requisite pumpkin desserts
5. I don't have an oven to bake my own muffins in

It was a sad, sad realization.

Today, however, I found a substitute. Mind you, it's not Krisanne's pumpkin muffins! In fact, it's not even pumpkin. But it will have to do.

Today I visited the muffin man, who kindly sold me 6 chocolate, chocolate-chip muffins and 6 gingerbread muffins. When I got home, I halved the muffins and recombined them to make chocolate, chocolate-chip/gingerbread muffins.

Mmmm! Mmmm!

Amsterdam

On Sunday we gave my dad the whirlwind tour of Amsterdam. This, of course, included starting the day with chocolate waffles.After starting in Dam Square, we walked through the center of Amsterdam, through the Jordaan District, past Anne Frank's house, by the Homomonument, around the church where Rembrandt is buried, and through the floating flower markets.

Next up was lunch, where we introduced my dad to Indonesian Cuisine at Restaurant Kantjil en de Tijger. Indonesia was once a colony of the Netherlands, so there are quite a lot of Indonesian restaurants and stores around. Lunch was delicious! We ate huge bowls of noodles, vegetables, rice, and meat. Matt's came with a coconut sauce and Dad's and mine came with a peanut butter sate sauce. And of course, it was washed down with a round of Belgium beers.After lunch, we visit the Dutch Resistance Museum. It was a wonderful, informative museum that told the story of Dutch from the late nineteen-thirties until after liberation. The museum was exceptionally well put together, with interactive displays, a multimedia guide, lots of artifacts, informative text, videos, and sound recordings, and tons of photographs. I would highly recommend this museum to anyone visiting Amsterdam. After over two hours, we found ourselves being ushered out by the docents as we had stayed past closing.

And then, it was back to Delft...

Agnetapark

Our nightly bike ride took us to Agnetapark, where Matt - still wishing he was in Belgium- enjoyed a chocolate waffle.

€ 30 and our last day in Bruges

For our last day in Bruges we had a list of sites and just €30. After filling up on our "buffet" breakfast of toast, nutella, and coffee, we headed out to the museums. We were pleasently surprised to find that the official Bruges museums cost just a €1 for those under 26 and generally come with a free audio guide. So away to the Gruuthuse Museum, a 15th century mansion with various artifacts and art from the city, and the Groeninge Museum, a building full of Flemish primitives, religious art, portraits, and modern art pieces.

Having only spent only €4 on site seeing, we were free to enjoy our last meal in Bruges. What did we have? Pancakes and chocolate waffles of course! We went to a wonderful little restaurant called The Flemish Pot and had lunch in a lovely little courtyard. We had a wonderful savory pancake with goat cheese, apples, and bacon, followed by a Belgium waffle with ice cream and chocolate sauce - DELISH! We're not touring through Europe - We are eating through Europe. 

CHOCOLATE

...the best part!

Where was the border?

With promises of "a whiff of the countryside, passing windmills, and a historic church" from Rick Steves, we rented bicycles on our first morning to explore Damme, and the Flemish countryside. We rode along the Nepoleoncanal, built by Spanish POWs during Napoleon's occupation of Belgium.

The windmill welcomed us into Damme, Belgium.

A sculpture in the courtyard of the Our Lady of Damme Church by Charles Delporte, a local artist.

Me in the courtyard of the church.

A view of the streets of Damme.

Our original plan was just to visit Damme and then go back to Bruges, but with such beautiful weather we couldn't resist going on the Dutch town of Sluis. We passed the Belgium-Netherlands border at some point but there wasn't even a sign to announce the new country.

Matt climbing the Ramparts and City Gates.

Following in the footsteps of Napoleon, Matt has conquered the city.

The Sluis Molen, built in 1739, was the first windmill to be built of stone.

It was also our first windmill to explore. The inside of a windmill looks, not surprisingly, similar to the inside of a gris mill. However, the views out the windows and from the decks are much more spectacular.

The geese rule the roads here. And the canals. And the parks. And possibly the town.

Matt crossing the Napoleoncanal.

After our 40km bike ride, we stop back in Damme to grab a bite to eat. In true Belgium fashion, we dined on a ham, grease, and mustard sandwich, chocolate waffles, and Belgium beer - Pater Van Damme Blonde and Bruin.

The Damme molen in the sunlight.

What a wonderful ride in the Flemish countryside.