Eurotrip with Dorbz

Well, this is about a week overdue. but its better posting it now then never!

We left Germany and headed over the border to the incredibly green Netherlands.
We took a quick stop at Fort Bourtange, an amazing man made 'fortress'. We walked around the area and stopped by the little village for some tasty apple pie and coffee. From the ground, it is filled with beautiful greenery, lakes and cute houses. But check out photos of it from a birds eye view and you ll see why it appears so special.


Birds eye view of the fort, photo from the net=)

We found another kitty while in the village. This time, it was a fat happy black cat.

Our travels took us next to the capital city of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. It is a very different world. One of the very first things you notice here (besides the occasional smell of weed) are the mass amount of bikes. They are EVERYWHERE! You need to constantly remind yourself about them when crossing roads or walking on footpaths to avoid being run over.If there is a pole or fence, there are a hundred bikes chained to it.

This is how every railing looks in Amsterdam

Besides the ruthless bike riders, the architecture and canals are beautiful.

We went on a free tour with New Europe (Well, its technically free, the tour guides are freelance workers and survive on tips). Our tour guide, Ged, took us around the central area of Amsterdam, the red light district and Jordan and gave us some history lessons on each

What a bike doesnt occupy, a car does instead


The guy in the red is Ged, our awesome tour guide


More bikes

Some of the many canals

Fun facts we learnt about Amsterdam!

Apparently, selling marijuana is actually illegal, contrary to popular belief. However, this law is not enforced heavily and the selling of marijuana in 'coffee shops' is tolerated, as long as they are subtle about it.
Although selling marijuana is illegal, these 'coffee shops' must apply for a license from the government to sell their special wares.
There are 3 layers in the canals: water, mud and bikes.12 -1500 bikes are pulled out of the canals each year and are sent off to be recycled.
With narrow buildings come narrow stairways, making it very difficult to get your shopping or furniture into the upper levels. You will notice many of the buildings are tilted forward and have hooks at the very top of the buildings. The hooks help carry goods from the ground up, the reason for the building being tilted is to avoid the goods smashing the windows on the way up. (Eventually, some genius figured out if you built the hooks sticking out further from the building, then you wouldn't have to tilt the houses)

Tram lines in Amsterdam

After some time by the canals, we crossed over the border to the beer brewing and waffle eating country of Belgium. We stayed for a day in Brugge within the centre, an old, beautiful world heritage listed site.

Guided tour of Brugge through the canals. Our captain was good fun

Brendan's turn to write!: Driving past the town first it didn't seem like too much a few spires popping over the top of some trees but once we had driven across a medieval looking drawbridge and drop gate we were gobsmacked to find this amazing little piece of preserved history. Driving down cobbled streets and coming across horse drawn carriages in the streets. We arrived early so our room wasn't yet ready for us. We left our luggage in the car and as we walked into the heart of the town the old churches,castles and trees welcomed us to wander through the streets and explode the many wonderful chocolate shops

Belgium produces a lot of beer in case you didnt know.A lot of it fruity.

Brendan posing in Bruge

Next up, France!
Since I spent so long talking about the other countries, Ill skim over France with some photos=)
We left Brudge and drove for 6hours to another stunning location, Mont Saint-Michel. This was a place that gobsmacked us by its historic architecture, views and placement. Anyone going to France's north coast should definitely make an effort to see Mont Saint-Michel.
Did I mentioned that it has crazy fast tides?


The fortress from a distance when the tide was low

Mont Saint-Michel from the sky. Another google pic=)

The old streets were packed tightly with old buildings, most of them are now occupied by hotels, restaurants or souvenir shops.

A view from Mont Saint-Michel

Now for some chateaus! There are way too many photos to post, so, have a look at the links to see more on their wiki article=)

Chateau de Villandry - Main entrance

Chateau de Villandry - Part of the gardens

Chateau de Chambord

Chateau de Chenonceau

We also stopped by Amboise and Dijon. Unfortunately, I cant seem to find my photos from Amboise=(

Downtown Dijon

More Dijon!

France had its beauty, but most of the people we dealt with were pretty forgettable (particularly the ones that didn't like you speaking English). Personally, it felt the least inviting out of all the countries we had been to so far. It still has so much to see, so I hope to be coming back here again soon.

It’s been a while since our last post and it probably will be longer till our next. Trying to bring yourself to write in the evenings when you’re exhausted from walking (and usually eating) is pretty tough, especially when a bed is so close by.

I’ll keep this one simple as I'm tired and have forgotten the name of many of the places we've visited.

So, the Czech Republic!

This was our first stop in Europe and for me, it was pretty emotional finally touching down in my 'ancestral' country for the first time (my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents are all Czechs). We stayed at a lovely hotel that has been used in the past as a convent, a jail, a hostel and now a hotel. Anyone staying in Prague should go there=) It’s called Unitas

We spent a few days in Prague with my brother, tour guide Tim, and checked out every church we crossed and many other ancient attractions. As I said, Im too tired to list them all, but truest me when I say we we very tired at the end of each day.
On our second day there, I was unfortunet enough to come down with heat stroke. It didnt hold me back from going for a pub dinner, but the roast duck and dumplings were cold in comparison to my tempreture=(
It was amazing to here so many stories and legends. Mum and Tim has a story to tell about almost everything we saw.

Tim took us to a pub called The Pub where taps are on your own table. Since how much you pour is recorded, there is also a giant screen showing the drinking scores of other tables in pubs across Europe.

I’ll leave Prague at that for now. There is so much more I wanted to write about, but I would be here forever. Next, we travelled to the small village of Malé Babice where my relatives lived. Besides my direct family and one of my cousins, it was the first time I had ever spoken and met my relatives, including my grandad, Funda. They were all a wonderful bunch of food, beer and slivovitsa loving people. Even with my broken Czech, I managed to get some conversation in. You learn very quickly while in Europe that you don’t need to know the language to get along, although it sure does help!

I should also mention that they had a beautiful piece of property, as well as a garden full of cherry trees, berries, strawberries, apples, plums and pears. I was so delighted spending some of the afternoon picking cherries of the trees=)

Walking through the village where my mum grew up. She came back for the first time in 30 years last year and she was still getting over at how much things had changed.

Brendan judges the trees.

Cheery tree!

After our stay in Czech, it was over the border to Germany to Dresden for 1 day, Berlin for 2 and then Breman (where we are now) for 1 day. Even with its past history, Berlin is not a city I would like to go back to. Dresden and Breman are beautiful in comparison and also had a lot to see. Too sleepy to type, so have some pictures!