khyatiandjordan

Our morning in Brussels we debated whether or not to sacrifice time in Paris on our last day in Paris or to see more of Brussels, which we were really enjoying. We decided against it to avoid any travel mishaps getting back and ate breakfast at the hotel after heading out on the 10:40 train arriving in Paris in a couple of hours. It was our last train in Europe which made us sad though we tried enjoying our time in spite of a screaming baby. Once in Paris, we had difficult time buying tickets and navigating the rail system, clearly fatigued from all that comes with traveling especially in a big city. Our new hotel was near our old one so once we were off the metro stop it was easy to find our way. ... read more

Well for over 25 days we had been enjoying the high life-seeing the most beautiful places in Europe, eating delicious food, enjoying great accommodations. All of that came to a its-time-to-face-reality halt our 2nd day in Brugge. Our day started off great when we enjoyed a delicious and lavish breakfast at the B&B which include various types of breads, assortments of jams and jellys, boiled eggs, yogurt, cereal and so forth. They even had this spread this is the new hot item in Belgium which looks like peanut butter but tastes like cookies you eat during Christmas. And, of course, they had the nutella which is an essential part of breakfast in Europe. As Khyati nervously ate, paranoid of the house cat she caught a glance of, we were joined by a young couple, who we ... read more

Our third morning in Amsterdam, we headed directly to the Anne Frank House to beat the line. We were there 15 minutes before it opened and a line had already started forming. It was one of the most popular tourist sites in city. We had both read a Diary of Anne Frank and knew that this was THE house where they hid from the Nazis but being in the house and feeling the weight of what that actually meant was an experience we didn't expect to have. It was incredible to peer out the same window she would to see the sun and clouds or walk up the same stairs to the attic she would to find privacy. We couldn't imagine what that experience would've felt like as a 12 year old girl. In her diary, ... read more

We had a few hours to spare the morning on the Rhine so after breakfast, we walked along the river and ventured into an old church near our hotel. It was warm out and town was crawling with day tourists. It was amazing how scarce it got by 21:00. The final journey was to the lower countries-Netherlands and Belgium-which are called that on account of being low lying lands near the deltas of 3 rivers. It was a four hour and 3 train transfer journey to Amsterdam-with lunch in Cologne-as we arrived in the Dutch capital at 16:30. We understood why this part of our Eurarail pass required reservation as the final train to Amsterdam was packed. We hopped in a cab to check into our hotel, which was situated next to a canal in the ... read more

After breakfast in our hotel and some quick castle souvenir shopping for our nieces, we took a cab to Fussen and hopped on a 4 hour train to Rothenburg. The German countryside was beautiful though flatter than what we had seen. We played cards while watching various animals grazing along the ride-cows, sheep,horses, even alpacas. We reached Rothenburg-another 1 platform station-in the early afternoon. It was a significant walk to the hotel and within minutes from the station, we entered the town gates to old medieval Rothenburg. It was as if we were on a movie set but, in fact, the city had been preserved and maintained as a medieval attraction for nearly 100 years. Walking the cobble stoned streets of the historic town, we found our hotel which was equally as historic and very German ... read more