More Wine Tasting.... Only tax free wine

There is a week when the Germans can sell their wine tax free. To encourage people to partake in this, they have samples of their wine for about five Euros you get to sample six wines.

Dutch Shoes and Cheese

Wooden shoes before the paint. Here I am trying them to see if they are as comfortable as the people in the shop claim.


Samples of Dutch cheese.



Amanda and me in a giant wooden shoe. Watch out tiny people! Wait perhaps we are the tiny people since we fit into a shoe.

Maryland

Feld's Point

Kevin and me at Inner Harbor in Baltimore

Brussels

My mom and me in the Grand Palace. Breath-taking.

My mom and me in front of Manneken Pis. There is some legend about a little boy peeing

The astro something



Overall, I was not that impressed by Brussels. It is an industrious city with little else other than being the Center of the European Union. So basically all you see are banks and lameo stuff like that. I had a Belgium waffle it was pretty good. I bought expensive Belgium chocolate and was not impressed. Although I had a Belgium chocolate cookie and it was awesome.

Although my distaste may be to due other factors such as poor weather and the third day of crazy travel having been in London and Amsterdam the previous two days. However, my mom brought up a validate point when she said, if the best thing your city has to offer is a naked peeing boy then there is not too much to your city.

Amsterdam

One of the places selling tulip bulbs and stuff in the flower market.

My mom and me in front of the Anne Frank house. Only about a hour or less wait to get in. Crazy! You hear that it can take up four hours to get in on a Saturday so we were very lucky. It was very interesting. A lot more in depth and informative than I thought it would be. I did cry during part of the exhibit.

On a side note, notice the shirts that my mom and I are wearing. MN love!

The canals with bikes in Amsterdam. I think this is the UNICEF group that was in Amsterdam.

My mom and me on the boat ride through the canals.

Amsterdam is a cool city. It is a little because there are so many tourists and the canals make it a little difficult to spread people out. I am really glad I did the Anne Frank House, it was definitely worth seeings. Afterwards my mom and I tried to make to the Rijksmuseum but we decided to have lunch and things ran a little late. So instead of having a hurriedly (and therefore not fun in my opinion) visit we walked the streets of Amsterdam. We went through the flower market and saw all the different types of tulips you could purchase.

On a funny note, we ate a buffet breakfast in the red light district of Amsterdam. Luckily there is no action going on that early in the morning.

London

Tower Bridge Not London Bridge

In front of Buckingham palace


Me and the Beefeater Bear

Me in an English telephone booth.

I LOVE London!! I am not sure if it just the city or my misconceptions about the city (I thought it would be industrious and without culture) but I truly love London.

We did a bus tour of the city of London during which we got out of the bus to watch the changing of the guards and then went on to walk to Buckingham Palace and the nearby gardens. My mom and I and two other people from the tour group went to the Tower of London. I enjoyed the Tower of London but learned a life lesson that the Tower of London takes an entire day to complete and that you need to get there early if you want to participate in any of the indoors tours.

The most photographed place in the world - Keukenhof

It turns out I love flowers..... It took a little bit of time and the right situation to realize that I am indeed a flower person.

Keukenhof Gardens are only open two months of the year and according to Wikipedia it is known as the Garden of Europe. This place is amazing! I know that that a garden with a bunch of tulips sounds corny but the way they plant them is done like artwork. Each area seemed to have a theme, like rainbow or a river. Actually evey year the park has a different theme for the tulips, 2010 was From Russia With Love.

Also there were people dressed in traditional garb that did traditional dancing to traditional music. It was pretty fun.

If you ever get the chance to go the Keukenhof Gardens - TAKE IT! And do not take the boat ride. It is lame. The boat ride only goes around the perimeter of the park and not inside the park. It was the only disappoining part of my visit.