Le Fabuleux Destin de Lauren: October 2009

Finally the trip to Amsterdam and Brussels! Laine and I don't have class on Thursdays and Fridays so we decided to go to Amsterdam and then meet all the rest of our friends in Brussels on Saturday morning.

Here we are Thursday morning in Paris Gare Nord trying to stay warm

I love the giant reader boards in Europe and watching people watch them. Especially when a platform number comes up and everyone scrambles to get there first

I entertained myself quite well if I do say so myself. I've decided to become a street performer in order to make money for my kebab fund, here I was writing down song lyrics

The view from the train was AMAZING, no seriously it was

AMSTERDAM! We got off the train and found a bus that went to our hostel

We were very happy

The bus ride was beautiful

After checking in to our Hostel we went to find food and see a bit of Amsterdam, we had arrived late since our train had to make an emergcency stop for a sick passenger

Kroket is a dutch food that is essentially meat, gravy, veggies, and spices, breaded and deep fat fried, it is amazing and comes out of these wall vending machines at a restaurant called Febo

This was attached to the train station construction wall, it is one of my favorite graffiti artists Shepard Fairy and his brand Obey. I took lots of photos I was so excited

The train station

That evening we hung out in Chinatown (a block over from the red light which we missed entirely that day)

We got dinner at a supermarket called ah, we both got a pasta salad sort of thing. Laine and I love to go into supermarkets and see what local people actually eat. It's really fun to see what's different from country to country and what is universal.

This is the view from where we ate dinner

Painted elephant!

There was some sort of Carnival type thing going on in Dam square while we were there, I'm not sure if it's always there or if it was a special thing.

Our hostel was awesome, it was a nice hotel turned into a youth hostel and the breakfasts were amazing. They had a legitimate espresso machine!

waiting for the tram to take us to the Van Gogh museum

The Van Gogh museum was one of the most amazing EVER we saw so many pieces. They also had loads of his letters that he wrote to his brother Theo. In many of the letters were sketchs of paintings he was working on or considering creating. They were amazing for someone with no formal training.

We had Shoarma and frites for lunch

The Anne Frank museum was astounding, we made reservations a day before so we could skip the line and go straight in (if you go do this! you can buy tickets at the train station in the tourist office). I'm still at a loss for everything I saw but it is a life experience I won't soon forget.

The painted elephants were all over Amsterdam and each had a name and theme here are 2 of my favorite that were in front of the church next to the Anne Frank House

The museum and warehouse/annex

The warehouse with the Annex is the one with the black doors in the middle

the canal next to the Anne Frank Annex

IF you want to know more about Anne Frank or the experience please email me and ask because I don't even know where to start in the blog so I won't. (I believe you can email me through my blog)

This is appelbollen my new obsession and possibly greatest love. Above on the left is my appelbollen and on the right is Laine's bananabollen that we both decided sucked in comparison of the mighty appelbollen. Seriously if I could marry a food it would be appelbollen

waiting for the bus to the train station we were caught in a sudden downpour

leaving Amsterdam I got the cliche windmill photo while on the bus to the train station

We grabbed a train from Amsterdam to Brussels where we met Jeanna and the Canadian girls: Kirsten, Laurel, Heather, and Leslie.

The first order of business in Brussels was frites and waffles (waffles are known as gaufres). I ordered my frites in the traditional way with mayo

They were really stinking delicious and I couldn't wait for Jeanna to take the photo

take 2 went much better

half of us got frites

and half of us got waffles

after waffles we went to the main square to see all the historic buildings

I don't know what this is but people were rubbing it for luck or something so I did too

here is a nice photo of a street performer in a sudden downpour

we went to the little peeing boy statue that Brussels is famous for and found a giant chocolate sculpture of him as well

apparently they like to dress him up, I heard that they have some 900 costumes for him

their street food is a little different from ours

This was parked outside of the church

This was across the street from the church

Jeanna and I met this really nice Polish skater living in Brussels and he let Jeanna ride his board a little. The other girls thought we were weird since we wanted to see the skate park more than the church.

I'm going to be honest and say I have no idea what the name of this church is

silly photo in a random ruin in Brussels

the best Belgian chocolate in Brussels according to a woman we met born and raised there

These are taken at a look out point next to the Palace of Justice

For dad

This was one of several HUGE tapestries in the metro station of all places it was really impressive to say the least

the California girls and snow we have no idea how it got there but there was a random pile of it in the street. After this photo was taken we proceeded to have a "snowball fight"