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We wanted to have a day without the ~2 hours of commuting going to and coming home from Amsterdam entails (also we felt like there wasn't much else to see in Amsterdam) so we slept in. It was fortunate since it was raining heavily. (Did we forget to mention that it rained the last two days as well, albeit briefly? Yes.) When we did finally venture outside we explored an expansive city park near the hostel that was beautifully maintained. The Europeans have a totally different attitude about parks than we do - a difference I will go into detail about in a later post. In brief, they are sculpted and meticulously manicured whereas ours usually try to imitate a "natural" landscape. Anyways, we spent a few hours in the park and the day became quite nice. It rained again in the evening, so we had dinner at the hostel again. We went to bed early because our train the next morning left early. (Sound familiar yet?)

Today we returned to Amsterdam to visit the Hermitage museum. It was really unfortunate timing because we arrived in The Netherlands literally on the day that the Van Gough museum closed for 7 months for renovations. In another week the Hermitage will have a new exhibit featuring many of Van Gough's paintings from the closed museum. So while we were in Amsterdam, those paintings were in limbo. Hopefully later in the trip we might be able to stop back to see the new exhibit. We spent most of the day in the Hermitage (though compared to the National Gallery in London and the Muses d'Orsay in Paris it was somewhat disappointing). After the museum we walked around the city a bit more before we took the train to downtown Haarlem where we explored a bit and got groceries for dinner. It was the same chain grocery store so we picked up the same Caprese pasta salad and a sun dried tomato salad. We had another laid back night at the hostel watching a Stephen Fry documentary and eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream. (Which the hostel sold.)

Today we got up early, had the hostel provided breakfast (decent) and then took the train to Amsterdam. We explored the canals, the old buildings, and the red light district. The old, sometimes crooked buildings were quite beautiful. We stopped into a cheese shop and bought half a kilogram of Dutch Gouda cheese. We munched on it as we walked around - delicious! As we headed back to the train station in the afternoon we walked by on of the side streets with window brothels. It was strange to say the least. We stopped in a grocery and picked up a delicious Caprese salad with some of the best mozzarella we've ever had. Yum! We also picked up some hummus and veggies that we had the next day for lunch. We spent most of the evening internetting.

We decided to spend our next few nights in Haarlem (The Netherlands - 15 km outside of Amsterdam) rather than the city proper in order to save some money and get some better sleep. (Taking the train into town is free since we have an unlimited eurail pass.) So we left Gent for about 4 hours of traveling. Unfortunately our first train was late so we missed a transfer and had to wait around for an hour. An hour isn't really that bad though, so we aren't complaining (that much). We made it to Haarlem but then weather was atrocious. The wind was blowing at over 30 km/h and it was raining. Hopefully the picture illustrates the situation. We had to walk about 20 minutes from the train station to the hostel (on a path that we would later find to be quite nice) in the hostile weather. We made it to the hostel, did some laundry, wrote a few blog posts and did a little planning for the next day. The hostel is pretty nice.

After a quick (25 minute) train ride we were in Gent. Gent is bigger than Brugge and we had to take a tram from the train station to our hostel. Our hostel was awesome! It was an old barge converted into a hostel, floating on the river in Gent. It is called "Eco-hostel Andromeda" and has a very ecologically conscious bent. The breakfast they serve is organic, free range, and vegetarian. The water in the toilets is grey water collected from rainwater. The beer they server in the hostel bar (remember this is Belgium - every hostel has a bar) was organic. The employee even gave us a map of vegetarian friendly restaurants in the city. Despite the dreary, rainy day, we decided to venture out to make the most of our day in Gent. We saw all of the historic buildings and sights (the city was just as beautiful as Brugge, but without so many tourists) and then made our way to a vegan buffet that was on the map we got at our hostel. We waited in the pouring rain for twenty minutes for it to open (literally). We got inside and... every single table was reserved. We were told there would be an hour and a half wait for a table; but I think the owner took pity on us, he gave us one of the reserved tables. It was absolutely AWESOME! It was most likely the most delicious buffet that either of us have ever eaten at. We felt like a million bucks after the great dinner and the ability to dry off while eating... We went home, sent some CS requests and then went to bed... or so we thought. This was our worst night in a shared room hostel so far. People were coming in and leaving at all times of the night, there was snoring, typing, some other repetitive computer noises, coughing, sniffling, and then early in the morning (before 6 am) somebody was rummaging around in a plastic bag for 10 minutes (no hyperbole) and another person was opening velcro sealed objects an unreasonable amount of times. If only we had remembered to put in our ear plugs the night before!

We slept in today. For lunch we waited to eat until a local eatery with highly recommended Belgian waffles opened. While we were trying to pass time we went to a small local bar that serves it's own beer, a highly rated beer that is only available at the bar. Both of these places were highly regarded in the Use-It map for Brugge, a map made by local young adults for young adult travelers. The bar was very well hidden - we had to walk back and forth down the street 4 times before finding it. It turned out to be hidden down a small alleyway. We entered De Garre and had a De Garre. It was definitely worth it; it was a great beer. We made our way back to the restaurant for our waffles. They were out of Belgian waffles! Fortunately they were also known for their spaghetti and I ordered that instead while Amy had pancakes (they were thin, like crepes). It was quite good. Afterwards we headed back to the Markt square to climb to the top of the belfry. (The belfries in Belgium and France are collectively a UNESCO world heritage site... how many can we see?) We waited in line for 15 minutes before seeing a sign that said that ticket sales ended in 15 minutes. We looked forward and saw that we were about halfway through the line. We waited... and waited... and when there were only 5 people in front of us, ticket sales stopped. We didn't get to go up to the top and wasted half an hour. Oh well, it was still a fun day - we wandered around town the rest of the evening and then went to bed early. We did get a delicious Belgian waffle from a street vendor. :)

We used our home base in Luxembourg to take a quick day trip to Trier, Germany on Andre's recommendation. Trier is the oldest city in Germany (16 BCE if you're curious) and is, wait for it, another UNESCO world heritage site. The city contains several remains of Roman civilization. The pictured archway, called the "porta nigra" in Latin (black door) was the entrance to the ancient city. We also visited the rubble of ancient Roman baths in the city. It was another beautiful city and fun day. We only narrowly avoided breaking our vegetarianism by eating sausages. :) Karl Marx also had a house in Trier, which we visited. Dinner was sushi, delivered to the house and paid for by our generous host Andre. It was great! We watched a movie with Andre and went to bed pretty early.

Today we didn't leave the house (except a quick stop downstairs at the grocery store). We spent the day sending requests to CS (CouchSurfing) hosts and searching for hostels in Belgium. We also were going to do our laundry but wound up doing it the next day. We made the classic Reischel-recipe baked macaroni and cheese with peas for our host and then spent the evening conversing.

Today was a fun day. It was nice to have another great CouchSurfing host - when we arrived the previous night he had already procured city maps for us and had even bought a pre-paid cell phone that he programmed with his number and lent to us while we were in Luxembourg so that we could call him if we needed to. Anyways, back to today. We started out with a great expresso from Andre's espresso machine and then walked downtown. (Luxembourg is a really small city...) There were a bunch of beautiful old buildings and the city center was surrounded by fortifications. Historic Luxembourg is actually a UNESCO site because in medieval times it was perhaps the most fortified city in the world. It was considered the "Gibraltar of the North". The city center was therefore on an extremely fortified hill surrounded by a river valley. (The river was even dammed so that the water could be released to drown attackers.) Unfortunately many of the historic fortifications were torn down when Luxembourg became a neutral country in the 19th century but those that remain are still impressive an hint at it's previous glory. These fortifications also had an extensive casemate system (remember Dover Castle?) which we explored. We went back home to meet our host (and another CouchSurfer from Hungary that was staying with Andre for just one night) and Andre gave us a tour through the valley, which is now a beautiful park. The evening concluded with us sharing a few good Belgian and Luxembourgish beers over some good conversation.

We spent the entire day traveling-- from roughly 8 am to 8 pm. All the Eurail seats on the high-speed trains were booked up for a few days so we had to take the slower trains and had to make 6 different transfers along the way. In Paris, we had an hour to waste before our next train arrived, so we went to a grocery store to get some Roquefort cheese (we had read about this specialty cheese in the book Etienne had lent us), chevre, and some French bread for our last French meal for a while. Arriving in Luxembourg, our next CouchSurfer host, Andre, met us outside his apartment which was only a few blocks from the train station. We chatted with him for a few hours before heading to bed.