How to have a Fabulous Afternoon in Bruges

  *Check out the cool buildings and Belfry in the Markt.

 

* Sample chocolate!  Check out a few stores.  Admire the cute and creative shapes and giggle at the inappropriate ones.

Watch out though... with all the crazy chocolate combos in Belgium,  you may try one that you won't be fond of.  Luke + passion fruit chocolate = lots of spitting, gagging, and priceless faces. 

* Admire the canals.

*  Eat a waffle!  Before dinner.  You can't be full for your waffle experience.  Especially if it's your first.  :)    

Just a heads up... If you decide to share your waffle, you'll probably regret it.  It will be gone before you know it!

 

More Windmills!

Once you've seen a few windmills, you've pretty much seen them all, but I didn't want to leave the Netherlands before seeing Kinderdijk... World Heritage sight and home to 19 historic windmills.  There's a big walkway that you can stroll down to see them all.  Would have been fun to take bikes!

KeUKenHoF. Another Adventure in Holland

 Keukenhof ("Kitchen garden", Dutch pronunciation: [ˈkøːkə(n)ˌɦɔf]), also known as the Garden of Europe, is the world's largest flower garden situated near Lisse, Netherlands. According to the official website for the Keukenhof Park, approximately 7,000,000 (seven million) flower bulbs are planted annually in the park, which covers an area of 32 hectares.^[1]

Thanks, Wikipedia.  I was curious to see how many flower bulbs they plant here each year, and that was in the first paragraph about the place.  I loved the day we spent here!  It rained a lot of our trip to the Netherlands, but this day was sunny and nice, and this park is gorgeous.  I wondered if it would be better to do a big flower garden as a girls trip, but the kids had a blast running around and checking out the flowers, and Jake liked it too.  Score.

Abby, Jake, and I took a ridiculous amount of pictures here.  Just couldn't help it!  Pictures don't really do the place justice, but you get the idea.   After wading through all of our photos, I think these were my favorites.  

I don't remember the names of these cute blue flowers, but we used to have them in our yard when I was little and  I've always loved them.

My sis!  Love her.  I need to go back to visit AZ to get some sun! I  look like a ghost standing next to her!

Tulips, tulips, and more tulips.

I heart this one of Ella smelling them.  She was putting her whole little body into getting to the right one  :)

Excited to try on more wooden shoes this trip!

 

Some of my favorite styles and colors of tulips!  

Keukenhof has some cool art throughout the park, too.

Daisies!

I think I want my back yard to look like this one day :)

And even more pictures I want on here..

They've got some awesome greenhouses here.  Inside you can browse hundreds of different kinds of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths.

 Keukenhof windmill...

The whole group.  The back of this boat was full of yellow tulips, but I guess we covered them all up! haha

Fields of flowers surround the park.  I was liking all of the purple!  And in the distance you can see rows of yellow, red, orange, and white.

After leaving Keukenhof we went over to the town of Lisse and ate dinner at Vrouw Holle.  Had to get in more Pannenkoeken!