Amsterdam and Brussels

Well, we took our first trip to Amsterdam a few weeks ago. And, oh boy, did that city open our eyes to lots of new things?! Travelling to and around Amsterdam was fairly easy (besides me attempting to purchase tickets at the train station's ticket machine in Dutch rather than English!). Once we arrived at our hotel, we were pleasantly surprised that they put us in one of their nearby apartments which had a lot of space -- guess they felt sorry for us travelling with three small kids. ;o)

When walking down the street the first night and smelling an "odd" smoke aroma, we realized that there were a lot of people smoking things other than cigarettes. Then, of course, we weren't sure what to tell the children when they asked why there were so many ladies behind the windows (in the Red Light District). We spent only two days there as we had seen as much as our eyes could take and decided to take a train to Brussels for a day trip. We decided to do our sightseeing on one of the tour buses and were able to see everything we wanted to in just a couple of hours. We ate lunch inside the Atomium which had quite a view ... and before leaving Brussels, we treated ourselves to a belgian waffle in the Grand Place (central square). ;o)