Madrid - our last school trip =(

We ended our traveling happenenings in Spain.  We met the school in Toledo, which was a really cool, small, historically filled city.  It's the city that is known for making a lot of swords in famous movies, ie: The Lord of the Rings.  It was really fun to go in all the little shops and see all these massive swords.  The weather wasn't exactly the best, so we didn't go out much, but the times we did it was always a blast.

Next we went to Segovia and my word, we thought Toledo was cold....Segovia was wayyyy worse.  It was a lot of fun though, because we took some ninja jumping pictures in front of the awesome aqueduct and saw larger than pea-sized hail.  I had never seen hail so big in my life and it HURT....BAD!!!  You'd think that my fro gives me a lot of cushion on my head.....but it doesn't...not one bit!!!!

We ended in Madrid and I LOVED Madrid.  There were a lot of fun filled times with lots of memories of good good good falafel, ice cream, and Bryce pretending to be one of those characters on the street.  Funny thing is that he actually made a few euros in about one minute.  I think he could make a living off of it...haha  It was sad to see our last trip come and go, but now I only have 3 more weeks left in Spain and it's crunch time.  After 20 days of traveling it's been a little hard to get back into school mode, but it must be done.  I'm gonna get my spanish on....

Brussels

So we didn't really see much in Brussels, but we stayed at a foreign diplomat's house.  He and his wife were so sweet and nice for letting us stay there with them.  We had a great time just hanging out and talking with them.  They are both two very intelligent people and the conversations that we had were far from dull.  Brent was a little under the weather while we were there, so we didn't get out much, but we did manage to make it to the car museum which was a lot of fun.  I got to see the first MINI and it was even blue like mine!!!  The city was beautiful and full of green.

It happened to be Brent's b-day while we were there, so we made him a italian dinner with a delicious chocolate cake to celebrate.  Cooking was the least that we could do for him and for the Kay's for the friendly hospitality.  It was soo nice to be able to cook and have a kitchen that was fully equipped.  It's been awhile since we've been able to have a home cooked meal and have all the utensils to make everything.  Brussels was the perfect relaxing time that we needed to make it through the rest of our trip.

I Amsterdam

Oh my word, I love Holland!!!  Go figure, considering that I'm Dutch.  I felt so at home...haha  Nolan told me I wasn't going to fit in there as much as he fit in in Egypt, but I'd say I fit in just nicely...haha.  We couchsurfed again in Amsterdam and I had emailed back and forth with Klaas quite a few times, so I was really excited to meet him and to see how he really was.  We got there and it was happened that Klaas and his roomate Joram were AWESOME.  They made us feel right at home and helped us with everything that we needed.

The first day, Klaas walked us alllllllll around the city...no kidding, we were walking for a solid 6 hours just getting acquainted with our surroundings and scoping out what we wanted to see the next few days.  Immediately that day, we noticed all of the cruiser bikes that Amsterdam had.  It wasn't until Klaas told us that there were more bikes in Amsterdam than people when we truly realized how many they were.  The ambiance was so much fun and it made me miss my blue beauty cruiser at home!!!!  At the end of the day, we decided to go to the Anne Frank house...considering that I am quite fascinated with WWII, this was amazing.  To be in that house was so neat and to see the places where she journaled and hid from the Nazi's was amazing.

The next day, we went to the tulip fields and I was ecstatic.  Tulips are my favorite flower, so I had been very excited to visit the fields, because Holland is known for the massive amounts of tulips.  The gardens were breathtaking.  We could have spent hours in the garden, but we had to rush back into town to catch a ride on the canal.  Klaas organized for us to go out on a boat with his friends and cruise along in the canal...awesome guy right?  yeah!  We cruised along and it was so crazy how different the city looked from the canals.  After the canals, we went to the Van Gogh museum where Starry Night was on display.  Usually it's in NY, but it just so happened that it was in Amsterdam for a short time.  I love Van Gogh's work so to see his paintings was a lot of fun.  To finish our stay, we walked through the red light district, just because you have to.  It was amazing to see all that going on right in front of you.  It almost felt like a movie.  It was sad, because Klaas told us that about 90% of the girls are there against their will and it's sad to think about the things that go on in our world.

I loved Amsterdam and sadly it had to come to an end, but it's a place I'll never forget and definitely a place I want to visit again.

London

So I've been to London 5 times now, but this was the first time I actually got to go and see the city.  It was the first destination of our 20 day long trip and it was a blast.  I went with Chels, Brent, and Phillip.  We saw all the major sights plus more.  

Big Ben was all it's hyped up to be and my favorite part about it was that every time we walked past it Brent would say, "how romantic," which gave me a blast into the past and made me remember how Max Brauer would say "how romantic," to things that you wouldn't normally use the expression.

We discovered awesome markets, thai food, and even got to see STOMP on broadway.  It wasn't my favorite broadway exhibition, but it was still entertaining.  We also got to visit the biggest Harrah's department store in the whole world and let me just tell you that I could have spent hours in there.  Overall, London was a success!!!