March

Yay for March!  One step closer to spring and summer!  We have actually had some really nice days this month.  One day was nice enough for a quick tennis match with Allie and Austin!  I was rocking my Mona Lisa socks if I do say so myself.  They should be a Tennis Tuesday staple, don't you think?

Our friend Spencer had a work meeting in our city, so he and Rachel came down and we got to spend an evening with them!  We have missed them so much!  It was really great to catch up with them.  I am so excited for them because they're going to have a baby any day now!

Of course Europe was a huge highlight of the month.  Here we are after buying some euros from the bank before we left.  We felt rich!

Another highlight was Shey coming for a visit!  We really have been so blessed this month!  She had a two day layover in Utah after attending a conference in Chicago, so we got to spend one of those days with her.  I can't even begin to say how happy I was to see her!

Other happy news - I got a new job!  My past job was great and I worked with some wonderful people, but I started getting major anxiety whenever the phone rang.  I guess that's what happens when random people yell at you over the phone on a regular basis?  So, for my health I decided it was time to stop being a receptionist and instead work for the happiest place in the world.  Thanksgiving Point!  I have worked for them before and LOVED it, so I am happy to be back.  I am specifically working for the Ashton Gardens, which so happens to be my favorite part of campus.  I have loved it so far!  It is also great having my benefits back.  Bailey, Shey, and I stopped by the Gardens for a visit while she was in town.  Things are still pretty dead, but it was fun to walk around!

The semester is winding down and the weather is warming up!  Happy days!

Keukenhof

Today was probably my favorite day of the whole trip!

We got up this morning and had breakfast with another couple who was staying at the Airbnb. The food was great and it was so interesting to chat with them along with our host! Seriously the first question we get from many people who found out we are American is “do you like Trump?”

Soon enough we were on our way to the airport, where we hopped on a bus to Keukenhof. 

Let me just tell you how lucky we were to visit Keukenhof! It is only open a few weeks out of the year, and this year it opened on the 22nd of March. Just a few days ago! I felt so lucky all day long to be able to visit such a beautiful place. 

Unfortunately they have had a cold winter, so many of the tulips were very behind. There were lots of sprouts and I can’t even imagine how it will look in a few weeks! At first we were a little bummed that they weren’t in bloom, but then we remembered how lucky we were to even visit at all. We decided that we will just have to come back another year to see all of the tulips!

They did have many tulips in bloom, though, and I enjoyed them so much. I can’t even tell you how many flowers I sniffed today, man!

It really was just the loveliest day! The weather was great, and we had the entire day at the park so we had no need to rush. 

They have delicious food in the park and many places to sit. We sat and watched two ducks fighting which was sad but kind of interesting. In fact, we did a lot of sitting today! We felt so at peace. There’s just something about gardens that makes me so happy!

This was taken right before he almost fell in! 

At this time of year, the biggest variety of tulips are found inside the greenhouse!

I also enjoyed listening to this thing.  What is it?  I don't actually know.  Seems pretty Dutch to me, though.

A highlight of the day was seeing the windmill on site! A real Dutch windmill, my friends! We even got to climb up to the top of it. It was a gorgeous site!

We bought some hot chocolate to drink and watched a parade come through which was really weird. It was a bunch of male dancers dressed as janitors, and ladies on stilts dressed as tulips. We had no idea what was going on! It is fun that they do things like that though. It is also fun that they had shops throughout the park. We loved the wooden shoe store!

We took it easy at Keukenhof today, which was the perfect way to end our trip. Tonight we will stay again in Amsterdam, then we will fly home tomorrow morning. Sad!! I am excited for delicious food though. We have a lot of delicious food in Utah!

Overall our spring break was AMAZING! From visiting Independence Hall to backpacking Europe, I feel like we did a lot with the time we had. Honestly, we are exhausted! If we were to stay longer we would need more restful days like today. But really, our trip couldn’t have gone better and we are so grateful that we were able to go.

It is so funny, I never thought that my first trip to Europe would be to the region we visited. But when that cheap flight email came through and we did research, we figured it would be a place we’d enjoy. And we did! The consensus is that our favorite place we visited this trip was Amsterdam (Bruges as a close second) and that we really probably will come back to Amsterdam because we forgot to eat herring and buy wooden tulips. Amsterdam kind of has a seedy reputation because of the red light district, but we just stayed out of the area and it’s like the red light district didn’t even exist! Be warned though, we smelled a ridiculous amount of weed everywhere we went. Steer clear of those “coffee shops”! We were also warned about pickpockets, but we kept our important things in our money belts and felt perfectly safe the whole time we were in Amsterdam and Luxembourg. Brussels was a little bit sketchy, though!

We are excited to get back to Europe, however it won’t be in the near future. We have a Yucatán trip soon, then Hawaii in the fall, and something big up our sleeves for my “senior trip” next summer. It is still in the works, but it includes a visit to our favorite place in the world - the Jiangsu province!

Anyway, I could have ended this blog post a while ago, but thanks for reading on with my ramblings. Traveling rocks, guys! Don’t think we are rich or anything, doing the things we do. We’ve made sacrifices in our lives to live the life we live - I mean, we live in Bailey’s brother’s house with him! Which is surprisingly awesome, we love it there. I guess all I am saying is that traveling can be accessible for anyone if us poor college students can do it. Just follow those cheap flight emails, eat out less, and be spontaneous. Bailey actually pulled the trigger on this trip when we were trying to decide whether or not to book. He told me, “when else will we have time to do this? We will only get more busy!” (Which is scary to think, because we are already crazy busy.) I think that applies to everyone. Book that trip, my friend!

Museum Day

This morning our Airbnb host fed us a delicious Dutch breakfast which included croissants, local cheese, and smoked salmon. Afterwards, we rushed to the Van Gogh Museum!

The Van Gogh Museum was amazing! The audio tour was an extra charge which is something to keep in mind if you ever visit. It was helpful, though. The museum took us through both his art and the story of his life which was of course quite sad. We loved seeing his art though! It is amazing seeing it in person because you could see just how much paint he used. I can’t even imagine how long those paintings would take to dry!

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of his art so this is about all we got. We highly recommend the place though!

The Museum Quarter has some delicious food huts where I ordered some chili and Bailey ordered this crazy hotdog! The food here in Amsterdam is much superior to any other city’s food we have tried this trip. 

The most superior food here, of course, are the stroopwafels. These things seriously rock!

By that time we needed to head to the Anne Frank house for our scheduled ticket time. We didn't take pictures inside of the museum so I’ll just tell you a little bit about it. It takes you through her father’s office building, which their secret hiding space was attached to. Along the way we had an audio tour (which was included in the price!) and that gave us some history of the war and what it was like in the area, as well as how it affected Anne and her family specifically. We were able to go into the actual hiding space and even see Anne’s room, which still had the pictures she had pasted to the wall. There was no furniture in their hiding place, because Otto Frank (Anne’s dad, the only one in the group who survived the concentration camps) did not want there to be any. There was a very sad and even kind of eerie feeling there. It was really eye opening to be up there in the dark as they would have been. I don’t know how they stayed there for so long! I wish that story had a happy ending, but I love how Anne’s diary was published so that we could all learn from her life. 

It was a sad place, but we do recommend the Anne Frank house for a visit! We then went to Rembrandt’s house which had a totally different vibe. He was one rich dude, and we loved seeing his grand house! There were some beautiful paintings there, but unfortunately only about three were done by Rembrandt himself. This painting was not done by Rembrandt, but here I am demonstrating the use of their (free!) audio guides!

My favorite part of the tour was seeing his studios! They had them set up as if he was painting, and the light was just gorgeous in there. I forgot to take a picture of course.

Three museums is probably enough for the day, so we grabbed some pizza and spent a little while walking around. The canals are so beautiful, and the houses are so cute! Amsterdam is just charming!

We hit Primark one last time for our trip, and then called it a night.

Train Travel

Today was a train day! We spent most of the day at stations and on the move. The train system here is a beautiful thing!

So here’s a picture of us with our yogurt. We didn’t think about spoons when we bought our breakfast, so I drank my yogurt while Bailey scooped his up with a chocolate chip cookie our Airbnb host had given us.

The ride was beautiful and a nice rest for us weary travelers. We were happy to reach Amsterdam again for the last few days of our trip!

We spent this evening shopping at the Bloemenmarkt and Primark for ourselves and for family members whose birthdays we have missed while being here. We also enjoyed just walking around Amsterdam. What a gorgeous place to be familiar with!

Luxembourg City

We woke up this morning with intentions to head out early... but when we looked out the window it was snowing! It was a beautiful sight - the snowflakes were big and fluffy. But if you know me you know I HATE the cold, and being out in the snow never sounds like a good time to me.

Bailey wasn’t feeling the weather either, so we decided to spend the morning in. Yesterday we had gone grocery shopping and bought salami, cheese, and bread. So we sat in bed and ate our snacks, hung out, and just relaxed! It was a nice morning and helped us feel more rested for our following adventures.

By noon it had stopped snowing, so we headed to the Bock Casemates. On our way we walked through The Grund which was so gorgeous!

The walk was a bit long, but there was a lot to see on the way. Also it really wasn’t that cold. So we enjoyed it!

Finally we made it to the casemates! I still have no idea what they’re all about. But they were definitely fun to explore!

There were several places where we could stop and admire the view of Old Town Luxembourg below.

After we saw the casemates, we went over to the Grand Ducal Palace. It was cool but we couldn’t go inside or anything, so we didn’t spend too long there.

The Luxembourg card covers admission to most visitor spots in the country, so we decided that we might as well stop in the Luxembourg City Museum. It was super cool to learn about the history of the country! To be honest, I had no idea the country existed until last autumn. So I do feel better now, having learned a bit about the place!

By then we were pretty hungry, and Bailey was feeling like hitting the nearby McDonald’s. I didn’t mind, since unfortunately the food in Luxembourg is not impressive.

Our last stop for the day was the Cathedral Notre Dame of Luxembourg! We really liked this cathedral because it wasn’t a tourist stop but rather an active cathedral. It was a bit dark inside, but we sat for a while and admired the vibrant stain glass windows. We also lit some candles which was an interesting experience.

At that point we had hit the major attractions of the city. We decided to stop by another grocery store for some snacks and then call it a night!

Vianden, Luxembourg

Today was a very relaxing day in Vianden, Luxembourg!

We got up this morning and took a train and bus to Vianden. The sun was shining so off came our gloves and hats! My coats even came off for a picture at the Ettelbruck bus station.

We got to Vianden and headed straight up the hill to the castle. It got bigger and bigger the closer we got - we were so excited!

Pro tip: buy the Luxembourg card if you ever visit the country. All of our transportation is free while we are here, as well as most of our admissions. We didn’t pay a thing to get into the castle!

Dang, they have got this visitor’s center thing figured out. We went through the museum which was super informative and creative. Not to mention, we had the whole place to ourselves! We spent quite a while there before grabbing lunch at the museum cafe.

Lunch was pizza, personal size and probably microwaved. Seriously the best meal we’ve had since leaving Amsterdam. This part of the world really struggles in the realm of food, so we couldn’t have been happier with our once-frozen pizzas! With happy stomachs and high spirits (the sun makes me feel so HAPPY!) we set off to explore the castle itself.

With the help of our map we made our way through. Man, castles are so dark and cold!

It was fun to imagine what life would have been like to live there, and how many fires would need to be going in the winter.  We found ourselves to be some of the very few visitors in the castle, which was an awesome experience.  I felt like we owned the place!

Bailey especially liked all of the armor and weapons that were on display.

I was a fan of the architecture!

My favorite were probably the courtyards where we could hang out in the sun and get a view of the small city below. If that castle were my house I would spend all day out there!

We made it through the whole castle with time to spare, so we took our time walking back down to the bus stop. There were some pretty cool views along the way!

Then it was back to Luxembourg City for us!

That was all I had planned for the day, so we spent quite a few hours just wandering around. We ate at a bakery, went grocery shopping for backpack snacks (backpack snacks are very important to keep me from being grumpy) and went to an Italian restaurant. The only difficulty we have had with Luxembourg is that fewer people speak English here. Our waiter only spoke Italian so the language barrier was a real problem. Bailey did well enough (because of his background in Spanish speaking) to say no to the wine, but this is the "salad" we ended up with. Definitely not what I had in mind!

The pasta was good but not good enough to go back. Once again I find myself just craving Mexican food all the days, but for now we are in a country that basically just has Italian food (one of my least favorite kinds of food)! So I will try to embrace it!

Tonight we will rest up for another day in Luxembourg. So far we are very glad that we came down for a visit! It is super safe and clean here, and everyone seems really friendly. Especially our Airbnb host who even left us food! Plus the sun is out, so times are good.