Netherlands/Belgium

Another long overdue post, the photos from my visit to Holland! After playing tour guide to my parents during Christmas we both flew out of the Budapest airport on January 1st. They were heading back to New York and I was headed towards Holland! First to Eindhoven, and from there onto Rotterdam, where I was meeting up with my old friend Kathleen and her sister, Maeve, who is studying there. Time for someone else to play tour guide for me! The plane/train connection went off mostly without a hitch, after a bit of wandering around, and I met Kathleen easily at the Rotterdam central train station. As we walked along the streets back to her sister's new place (she had just moved!), I reveled in the Dutchness of the houses.

Maeve has two beautiful, luxurious, fluffy cats who are somewhat friendly to whom I am very, very allergic. This started to be a bit of a problem towards the end of the second day but still, they were so cute!

On our first full day together, we luxuriated by sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Then Maeve had some things to take care of and Kathleen and I headed off to Delft, onetime headquarters to the painter Vermeer.

 Your eyes are not deceiving you and I did not take the picture poorly. That tower (Oude Kerk, or Old Church) be crooked.

 A vision in pink!

 That seemed to me a funny place to put a door, but the ducks were not complaining.

The other very notable church in Delft, Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). This one is right in front of the town's market square, which was bustling with cheese and fish and fried anything/everything vendors when we arrived.

City Hall.

Cheese purchasing- a task to be considered carefully!

This little dog was hanging out under one of the stalls and with very little prompting (okay, some prompting was involved) came out to say hello and grant us the honor of ear scratches. He was so cute and had I not needed to take several trains and a plane to return to Budapest, he would probably be curled up with me as I write this.

After the hard work of wandering around slowly for an hour, we stopped for a refreshment.

 Then we went through the Vermeer Center, the house in which the artists' guild of Vermeer's time met, and visited the New Church...

...as well as the Old.

That is one seriously old fish market.

Night was beginning to fall so after meeting back up with Maeve we were put to work, accompanying her to the nearby IKEA to furnish her new digs!

 Don't mind if I do?

 The thrills of shopping.

A mural we encountered on the way back to the train station, with one of Vermeer's most famous works on it (Girl with a Pearl Earring).

The next day we got moving a lot earlier and were a bit more ambitious, as we headed out to Amsterdam.

 Unfortunately the weather was not great. We hadn't thought to purchase tickets online beforehand to the Anne Frank House (something that you can do, and I would recommend that you DO do!) so we waited about an hour and half/two hours and then we walked through. It is as sobering, interesting, and tragic as you might imagine or know it to be.

By the time we finished we need to cheer ourselves up and the weather wasn't helping, so we grabbed some food and drinks and walked around a bit more before heading back to Rotterdam.

(HOTEL TAMARA!! Reminds me of my old Georgia days...)

 Last view of Amsterdam.

This is the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, which we walked past on our way to dinner at the Hotel New York, a beautiful old place.

 The next day I said my goodbyes to Kathleen, who was flying home, and Maeve, who had work to do, and after a few hours deliberation decided to spend my last day in Gent before returning to Brussels for my flight home. Unfortunately the pair of boots that I was wearing, which I purchased in Tbilisi last fall when the pair I was wearing THEN (that a good friend had given me) died, did the same thing and died on me while we were walking around Amsterdam. The sole became unattached from the boot and there was not much hope of salvaging them as they were pretty cheaply made in the first place, so I went into the closest shoe store (that just so happened to randomly be a vegan shoe store) and bought a new pair. They were pretty expensive and additionally, although they were at first comfortable by the end of the day my feet were hurting and by the time I'd ridden the two trains to get to Gent and walked waaaaaaaay out of my way to get to my hotel, due to getting very, very lost, my feet were basically ruined. Popped blisters bleeding through the socks ruined. So although I ventured into the center of old town Gent after finding my hotel for long enough to get some food and take a look at the Christmas market, I didn't go much exploring.

My hotel was cool, though. It was the only place with an open room on such late notice in Gent. Basically it was an old church that had been converted. I was in the Sanctus Batholomens room. It was very nice, although freezing cold (initially, I figured out the heater eventually).

Walking into the town center.

 Not many open vendors at the Christmas market (this was January 3rd, after all) but enough people open that I could find scavenge some food.

The hotel courtyard, by morning. Feet still in tatters.

Walking back to the train station, to head to Brussels, because I am a stubborn idiot.

Tiny window kitteh!!

 I wish I could say that I didn't change into the slippers Kathleen had given me as a Christmas gift once I got to the airport. I wish I could say that before that I didn't duck into the public bathroom in the Brussels train station so I could cry for about 2 minutes about how badly my damn feet hurt. I cannot say those things, though, because they did happen. Not many things can really ruin a good trip for me, but feet pain is one. And weirdly enough, it seems to be the one that always gets me. I have terrible shoe luck. In any case, still a pretty good trip and a very joyful reunion with one of my favorite people.