Europe here we come

 

The Netherlands

After an uneventful trip across the pond via ferry to the Netherlands, we stashed our bags and visited the Rijksmuseum, wow I had been there 39 years ago but the building alone is an architectural marvel crammed packed with so much art, sculpture, furnishings that after 3 hours you just cant take anymore in.  We collected our stuff and headed to Den Haag (The Hague).  Wow the Peace Palace housing the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague Academy of International Law.  I couldn’t help but notice Mission Impossible the final reckoning locations. The architecture, canals and overall feel of Den Haag is lovely. 

Peace Palace

Canal trip

Belgium

Another train trip and we landed in Brugges, yep it is everything you have been told, no exaggeration the old town is stunning, the architecture is mind blowing, everywhere you look, every alley you look around and see something amazing.  Needs to be on everyone’s bucket list.  We would come back.  It may have helped that we stayed in a terrific Airbnb 3 story duplex for 4 nights with a sunny courtyard 300m from the main square, I was able to prepare food that were used to no fried food or chips to be seen.  Photos do not do this place justice.  Of course, Bradley thought another walk up the cathedral tower would be great fun, 369 steps later …

 What we did notice was Belgium is all about chocolate and waffles.  So as a treat we looked up the best waffles in Bruges and visited Lizzies waffles, wow oh wow, thank god I have never had waffles like that before I would be 10 stone heavier – truly mouth watering and light as a feather..  of course Bradley could eat them 3x a day and still look trim, taut and terrific.

View from tower

From Brugges we went to Belgium via Waterloo, now if you truly know Bradley then you know he loves military history, so it is essential he explains this next bit, I will preface it by saying we had a jolly nice meal at the local restaurant with a few sherbets and met some terrific locals who will hopefully visit us in Brissy.

The Battle of Waterloo

Bradley over to you … Yes, Christine was very good to let us take a trip here to what is basically a long shallow valley of farm fields outside of Brussels and nothing else. You can stand on top of the Lion’s Mound, which is the huge monument built to Wellington’s victory here against Napoleon in 1815, and look out over the entire valley where the battle between the two armies was fought. It is a peaceful place and is impossible to imagine the carnage that occurred here. There is an impressive museum below the mound  that laid out the background to what was going on during the Napoleonic wars, and how it all came to an end here in this valley. Wellington got the majority of the credit, as he should, but for me the most impressive character was the commander of the Prussian army, Field-Marshal Blucher.  Blucher’s army was defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Ligny two days earlier.  Blucher’s horse rolled over him during the battle, and he was nearly killed, but dragged himself out of his sick-bed and forced marched his army 40km to Waterloo in the pouring rain to arrive in the nick of time to roll up Napoleon’s flank and ensure his ultimate defeat. The guy was 74 years old! When asked  why he did it he said “I made a promise to Wellington.” Very old school. You don’t hear as much about him as Wellington, but you should. Interestingly, the village immediately behind us is called Mont-Saint-Jean. Waterloo is over 4km  away and is just where Wellington happened to have his HQ and wrote his despatches after the battle. If only ABBA had known, history would have sounded very different! 

 

Brussels

On our way there the train filled up with so many people I am positive it was overloaded, everyone wore red, heading into Brussels to protest, thankfully they got off two stations before us otherwise there would have been no way we could have left the train.  I have been sick with a persistent cough which is not getting better so we stayed at a very swanky hotel and relaxed for a couple of nights.

Wurzburg

We mentioned in a previous post that a bed and brekky fellow guest suggested Wurzburg as a layover, imagine our embarrassment when we arrived and everything felt very familiar, we had in fact been there before when we went on our river cruise from Hungry to Amsterdam.  That night a large group of guests at the hotel were off to a private party for some rich dude (they had arrived by private plane) they recommended visiting The Residence (Palace).  Now once you have seen 30 palaces, they do tend to blur a bit but wow oh wow this place is up there with Versailles.  Again, the photos won’t do this justice but considering most of the residence was bombed in 1945 the restoration is nothing short of stunning.

Garden 1

Garden 2

Prague

We like trains particularly the 1^st class ICE German trains it was a bit of a shock that the last 4 hours of our epic 6.5 hour trip was on a train that reminded me of travel 40 years earlier, probably the same train.  Our accommodation is in a great part of the town with many restaurants and bars around us.  We visited Charles Bridge, again I kept on getting flash backs 30 years ago to the 1^st Mission Impossible.  We climbed the hill up to the palace and cathedral and visited familiar sights that we had previously explored 15 years ago and soaked up the ambience. Bradley particularly liked the story of the founding myth of Prague which essentially involved an epic road-trip by a prince and his friends. It had drinking, lions, and betrayal, and sounded very much like the film “the Hangover”.