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!

Zaanse Schans

I was going to combine a lot of these outings we went on in the Netherlands, but since I have a million pictures at each place that I want to include in the next blog book, I'm going to break it up into more posts.

So,  Zaanse Schans!  Such a fun place.  It's busy with tourists because it's so cute and full of what you picture Holland to be.  You can eat lots of Dutch food, visit a wooden shoe workshop, check out windmills, and visit little museums.  We had a great time!  The kids loved playing in the big wooden shoes and we all ate lots of pannenkoeken.

Luke was pestering this ugly duck... trying to make it hiss at him, and enjoying every minute of it.

See, this is what you picture Dutch countryside to look like, right?  So cute.

There is a place that makes cheese here, and you can't escape the smell.  It is everywhere!  Kind of stinky.

We were loving the shoes!

Playing in big clogs... :)

 I admit it.. super cheesy, but Ella's reaction to Jake giving me kisses cracked me up!  

My cute little Dutch boy.

I think Jake needs a pair of  mouth clogs for work.  Abby too for that matter!  Perfect for a dentist or hygienist, right?  Check them out!   Fun to see all the different kinds they had.

 

You can get them in any size and color.  We went home with some cute little souvenir clogs, and Abby got some super cute tiny ones!

Where they make them...

After looking at all of the fun shoes we went over to eat at this restaurant...

Stuffed ourselves with pannenkoeken!  I think we decided that the ham & cheese and apple cinnamon were the best.  So good!  Other flavors we tried were curry, pineapple and cheese, and berry.  I think the berry one came in last place.