A Whirlwind

It was a busy holiday season, but busy in the best sense because we were spending tons of time with family in Europe and on top of it all going on some pretty wicked trips! My parents were here just under a month and in that time we went to Prague, celebrated Christmas in Den Haag, hit up Barcelona and finished off in Fryslan, it was a whirlwind no doubt, but it was great!!

We went to Prague for four days before Christmas and we loved it! Prague is such a magical city, especially around Christmas time with all the twinkling lights and seasonal ambience. We had a great hotel located right on the Old town square which put us right in the middle of the Christmas markets, cafes, astronomical clock displays and beautiful cathedrals&churches on all corners. We did a lot of walking around, but also did an on and off bus tour which brought us around the city to see some areas we might not have made it to.

First off we visited Prague Castle, it is huge and has a bunch of different buildings, churches and exhibits you can visit. It was really busy there when we went because a former president had passed away the day before (he was the president responsible for democracy in the Czech Republic I believe, but I forget his name) and so there were a ton of ambassadors coming in to where he would lie in state. We went up one of the churches towers 200+ stairs in a tiny corridor, a work out but totally worth it once we saw the view. We had a great birds-eye view of the entire Castle grounds, very cool! On our way back from the castle we walked across the Charles Bridge, which is a very old, historic bridge in Prague and it is beautiful!! We walked across around twilight and the lighting on the water and the city was breathtaking.

We also went to the Jewish Quarter in Prague which was sobering. Prague is actually very close to a concentration camp, about an hour away and had we been there longer I would have really liked to do a day trip there, something that I think would be terribly difficult to see, but also something I feel like I need to see, someday. In the Jewish Quarter we were given a very good idea of what it was like to be a Jew during WWII, there was a massive memorial for Czech Jews listing all their names, it was massive. I think it is really hard to comprehend the enormous numbers of people that lost their lives and when you see them written out on walls it is overwhelming. There are various  synagogues in the area that we were able to visit, including the oldest functioning synagogue in Europe. Attached to one of the synagogues and exhibitions was the Jewish cemetery, the graves look to be a couple of feet off the ground, but really there are several graves piled on top of each other, because there was not enough room, and it was a big grave site.

We also had some really fun nigh time activities including a Czech beer tour, The Nutcracker in a beautiful and old theatre and nightly cocktails in the old time bar in the basement of our hotel. The cocktails part was really fun, for those of you who know my dad you know that he has recently gotten interested in the craft of cocktail making, the history behind the drinks and alcohol and the different drinks themselves, a cocktail connoisseur so to speak:) This bar had pre-prohibition cocktail recipes, using different and now rare alcohols to make some really interesting and tasty drinks! It became a bit of a thing for us to have drinks every night and everyone had to try a new cocktail from what they had before. not to mention the bar was in this super cool basement/cellar with a very old time vibe and a live piano player, a highlight for sure.

We came back a few days before Christmas and jumped right into the celebrations. We had some dinners with my dad's family here in Holland, played a whitle elephant game with appys and treats on Christmas eve and attended a great Church service at our Church here,  had stockings on Christmas day before we headed out to an amazing brunch at this great hotel on the beach here in Scheveningen. On boxing day we went to Amsterdam and saw the Van Gogh museum and the Bols museum (essentially the history and creation of Jenever-the Dutch gin) and then Skyped with the Van Huizen family back home, with more stockings:) Overall a great Christmas here in the Netherlands!

On the 27th we headed to Barcelona! Barcelona was really fun as well, even though sometimes our timing was off and so we missed a few attractions (we did not account for the holiday of new years, opps!) Overall however it was great, we had awesome weather with the temperature around 15-18 degrees or so (not tropical, but very pleasant!) We walked a lot again, seeing famous streets like La Rambla and buildings like Sacrada Famillia. The architecture in Barcelona is different from what we have seen so far, much of it being designed by Gaudi, it was very interesting. We spent some time at the beach and while it was a bit too cold to swim we still touched the mediterranean!

We celebrated New Years while we were in Barcelona, which was a really unique and crazy experience. I have never seen so many people on one street, unreal! It was also a little scary because throwing glass bottles onto the ground seems to be a bit of a trend and so we dodged a few flying shards and champagne being poured off windows as we made our way back to our place. Other highlights include, my dad chasing down a pickpocket who stole his jacket right off his chair (he got it back-the guy dropped it once he realized there was no wallet), spanish wine-yum!, visiting a music hall which had some of the most amazing stained glass I have ever seen, and exploring cool areas and streets that look like alley ways but actually have super funky shops and restaurants in them.

Back from Barcelona we had a couple of days to recoup before we went to Fryslan for the weekend our last trip with my parents before they were off on Sunday. We got a chance to visit my Dad's family on my Pake's family. We got to see where my Pake grew up and in what house, which was really neat. And we got to meet my Pake's only surviving sibling, his sister, a very special visit for all of us I think. We also had a chance to explore Leeuwarden, which is a pretty cool city. Frylsan in general is pretty awesome, we have been twice now and have really enjoyed it both times! We drove home on Sunday, left my parents at the airport and they flew home from there. Such a great trip with them!!

On Monday Jason and Lindsay arrived (Joel's oldest brother and his wife) and they are here visiting us and various other places in Holland for the next two weeks, lots of visitors for us!! Really fun to be able to hang out with so many family members and friends while we are here though! And what is next for us you ask? We are going to be around our place until the end of January and then we are off to Paris<3

PS I will try and post a few pictures from the last month and all the trips, but I have also posted them on facebook as there are so many pictures and blogger does not really post pictures that well

Cheers!
Megan&Joel

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas or rather Vrolijke Kerstmis!!

We just wanted to wish everyone a very blessed Christmas, we miss you all and we hope that you all have an amazing holiday with friends and family. We are loving having my parents and Alicia here and we have been keeping ourselves busy with many Christmas activities and dinners:)

We went to Prague last week Sunday for a couple days and it was amazing!  Later this week we are leaving for Barcelona and are super excited about that!! I will post a blog with more details and pictures of both trips once we are back.

Until then Merry Christmas again and Happy New Year!!

Love,
Megan & Joel

Sinterklaas and Christmas Cheer

We are in the Christmas spirit over here! We started by taking part in the merriment for Sinterklaas which was on Dec 5th, however there have been various Sinterklaas events taking place all over Den Haag since November 12th when Sint arrived by boat in Scheveningen! This has been cool because while it is a holiday we all grew up knowing about, we have never really celebrated it in its true form and where better than the Netherlands to start:) Unfortunately we missed the actual parade, but ever since there have been Zwarte Piet's playing music and throwing pepernoten wherever they go and we even had the honor of meeting Sinterklaas in a local pub (FYI he drinks beer and smokes, don't tell the kids!)

This past Sunday we were invited by someone we met at Church to celebrate Sinterklaas with her friends and some others from Church. We got to participate in the traditional game, which plays much like a white elephant gift exchange except that you can end up with more than one present or on the other side with nothing, its pretty intense! Suffice to say, between the three of us we ended up with quite a bit of loot to take home with us. It was a really fun evening and we had a chance to meet a bunch of new people, many who attend the church we have been going to. That was really nice because since we are not working or even around super consistently it makes it hard to meet people, they were great and we had a good evening of fellowship and Sinterklaas cheer!

On Monday (officially Sinterklaas) Joel, Alicia and I exchanged some small gifts that we had bought for one another through a name exchange. We of course all received a yummy chocolate letter and other goodies! It was a fun way to celebrate the day.

Now that Sinterklaas has gone and past, everyone in Den Haag has switched there gears towards the Christmas season! Stores quickly replaced Sinterklaas treats with Christmas wares and the Christmas trees came out! We did not plan on getting an actual tree this year, because our place is not super big and because we will be travelling around a bit this Christmas season. However after talking with my parents we decided to go for it, as we will actually be around at Christmas and with family here it is really nice to have the house feel cozy and Christmasy! So now in addition to the many snowflakes Alicia and I crafted, the candles, the music, and yummy Christmas food, we will have a tree!! There is a lot of Christmas cheer in this house and we love it! A little snow at this point would actually be kinda nice, but at this point we have only had some wind, rain and lightning storms.

My parents arrive a week from today and we are super excited!! It is going to be a busy Christmas season, but a very special one as well. We are looking forward to spending this time with family and having the opportunity to spend it in a few different countries as well!! We feel very blessed.

Here are some pictures from our Sinterklaas and the beginning of Christmas

 Christmas Flowers

 Zwarte Piet coffee mugs-one of our gifts from the Sinterklaas game

 It's present time!

 My gifts from Joel

 Joel got a T-Rex from Alicia- he is pumped

 Alicia's gift from me

 Oh I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.....my kinder surprise toy

 Our Tree!

Christmas Family Picture

Love,
Megan and Joel

Belgium and Berlin

Hello All. This post is long overdue. I find it hard sometimes to remember to blog and then by the time I decide to sit down and do it, I struggle to remember everything I wanted to blog about! I will do my best and forgive me if this is a tad long, but lots has happened since I last wrote.

We were back from Ireland only just over a week before we ended up leaving again. We decided once we were back to book a trip to Belgium and Berlin! During the week we were home, we both got quite sick and so that week was a write-off. Finally healed we were off for our trip...

We were able to see a lot of Belgium for the week we were there. First off we headed to Brugge for two days. Brugge is a super cute, old town that has a ton of chocolate shops! The place pretty much smells like chocolate everywhere you go because every second store sells and makes chocolate, yummy! We visited the chocolate museum that they had there, which was both informative and tasty;) It was quite cold while we were in Brugge and so we spent a lot of time hopping between cafes, shops and old buildings. Apparently everything is closed on Monday in Brugge and so unfortunately for our second day there we braved the cold more than I would have liked because all the museums, buildings and even lots of stores were closed.

Next we went just for the day to Ypres (aka Flanders Fields), this was a cool trip because we ended up being there only a few days after Remembrance Day so there were a bunch of fresh memorials set up around the town, which was neat. Again we had bad timing and the Flanders Fields museum had been closed down just a few short days before to be renovated over a 8 month period. But we were able to see the memorial for the British Empire for soldiers whose bodies were never found and a grave site.

The same day we left Ypres and went to Antwerp. Antwerp is a cool city! It is bigger than Brugge and a bit more modern, but it had a really great vibe. We lucked out and our hostel/hotel was right next to the gorgeous cathedral in old Antwerp, absolutely beautiful! The museums in Antwerp were also super cheap and so we went to the fashion museum and Ruben's house (famous painter from Antwerp). We walked a lot and saw some sweet buildings, castles and monuments to WWII.

After Antwerp we were of to Brussels to end our time in Belgium. In Brussels we went to an underground museum that showcases the ruins of the old city of Brussels, saw how belgian students party (in massive semi trucks with the sides cut out and dance parties going on!), walked a LOT, went to a cafe/pub that had 2040+ beer selection (it was unreal, and so hard to choose!), saw manneken pis (he is smaller then one would expect) and ate yummy sugar waffles! Those are some of the highlights at least.
We tried lots of Belgian beer and chocolate in all the places we visited and saw a ton! Joel has actually started a list now of all the new beers he has tried, its hard to remember them all since we got here, but we got to try all kinds in Belgium:)

From Brussels we flew to Berlin, where we got on the plane and into the country without showing our passports once! It was kinda crazy, because even though Europe has open borders most places will still look at your passport when you enter the country...it was a weird feeling haha. Anyways, we loved Berlin! It was a bit of a last minute decision to book a flight to Berlin and I am so glad we did. It is a city with so much history and it was really cool to see where so many events we have studied in history occurred. Our hostel was right next to the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall that is still standing. It is now called the East Side Gallery and was painted on by artists from 21 different countries, very, very cool! We walked down the wall and along the way found a bier haus, in complete bavarian style that had a happy hour 1L of beer for 5 euro (can you see the smile on Joel's face?) so we had some pretzels and beer (yup me too, took me awhile but I was pretty proud of myself), it was great! Some other highlights from Berlin:
The German History Museum (massive! but sweet)
The Television Tower (we went up at night, awesome view!)
The Museum District (super old buildings that you can still see the bullet holes in...)
Christmas Markets!! Complete with yummy German food, drinks (mulled wine for instance), a skating rink, lights, trees, music, it really got us in the spirit:)
Potsdam Palace (Alicia met up with us the 4th day we were there and we went to Potsdam and it was cold!)
We had an awesome time, but were also ready to have some time at home after all that travelling around.

I will post some pictures below, but there are just too many to put them all up so check my facebook as well where I have posted them all:)

Now we are back and Alicia has joined us for this Christmas season as well:) We have had a ton of fun starting the decorate our place for Christmas and relaxing around Scheveningen.  Today Alicia and I cut out over 40 snowflakes, we are going to have one festive home! We are really looking forward to spending Christmas here. There are so many fun things going on already and Sinterklaas is just around the corner (Dec 5)! Also for Christmas there is an olibollen cart set up right on our main street by our place!! (deadly...but also so yummy!!) My parents are coming in a couple weeks as well and so we are very excited for that. It will be wonderful to have family around for Christmas and to spend it here is going to be awesome!

We feel so blessed to be having this experience it has been amazing so far. We have also found an international church in english that we have gone to a few times now and we really like it. It is nice to be getting more involved in the community here as well, even though we are not always here.

We would love to hear from you as well, please send us updates on your lives:) Even though we are far away it is nice to still feel connected to everyone back home and keep up with you as well. We hope that everyone is doing well!

Brugge

 Joel and a Chocolate Obama

Ypres

Antwerp

Brussels

Berlin

 Yay Markets!!

Love,
Megan&Joel

Visiting Friends & Ireland

We have had a busy couple of weeks!! Robyn and Brian came to stay with us for a week and we got the chance to hang out together exploring Den Haag, Delft and Amsterdam together, it was fantastic! We also had a lot of time to relax and catch up with one another, it was wonderful to spend some time with them after a year away from each other. We took a bike ride to Delft and showed them around the town and went on a tour of the mausoleum for the royal family and climbed the huge tower of the church. SO many stairs in a curvy, tiny tunnel of a stair case. Pretty sure we were all a little dizzy and tired by the end of that climb, especially after the long bike ride to Delft (20km from our place so 40km once we had biked back). We then spent some time hanging out in cafes, shopping, and going to a dueling piano bar in Den Haag before we went to Amsterdam for a night where we stayed in a Bostel!( a hostel on a boat) it was cool, but very, very small as you will see in some of the pictures. Overall a really great week together!!

And then on to IRELAND! Robyn and Brian left for their cruise last week Wednesday and then on Thursday we flew to Dublin. We met up with Alicia there (she had arrived a few days earlier) a spent the week exploring Dublin and some areas of the country side, we made it to Galway and the Cliffs of Moher and Dun Laoghaire. 

In Dublin we went to the Guinness storehouse to see where and how Guinness is made and of course it was complete with a pint of Guinness at the top in the Gravity bar, which has some of the best views of Dublin. We visited Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison, Trinity College, the Chester Beatty Library and the St. Patricks Cathedral. We even had the opportunity to attend Evensong at St. Patricks which was a service on Sunday with a choir from England singing mostly with some readings and a brief sermon from the Archbishop of Ireland (Anglican Church). It was really cool! 

On Monday we took a bus to Galway (about 2 hours outside the city) and went on a tour of the countryside complete with a visit to the Cliffs of Moher, which was absolutely amazing!!!! Ireland is such a beautiful country, with so much to see! The pictures do not do it justice, but they give you an idea of the beauty we witnessed. We were a bit sad that we did not have more time and are thinking that we might go back at some point so that we can see more of it. We also had really great weather while we were there and so that was awesome, given that this time of year Ireland is normally very rainy and we actually just missed some severe rain storms only a few days before we arrived. A gorgeous country in all weather though, I would highly recommend it.

On our last day we took the train to Dun Laoghaire (P.S. I Love You reference here ladies;), which is a super cute town on the coast with some beautiful ocean views and nice areas to walk around. Unfortunately we did not run into Gerard Butler, but it was a nice place to visit, much less busy and more relaxed than Dublin (which is crazy by the way, so busy, although we were there during reading week for universities and a bank holiday weekend). Also another note in Ireland children trick-or-treat for money (in pubs no less) instead of candy...very interesting to say the least.

We walked a TON, drank lots of Guinness, ate bangers and mash (Joel's new fave food) & irish lamb stew with soda bread (a fave for Alicia and I), searched for irish wool sweaters with success, and heard live music every night! A fantastic trip!

Doors in Ireland are very colourful and I love it!!

      The Cliffs of Moher

As the Irish say "SLANCHE"! (cheers)

Megan&Joel

Home is wherever I'm with you...

We are officially moved in! We have a home and are living the Dutch life (well not that we weren't before, but it pretty sweet to have our own place). We moved to Scheveningen on Sunday and are all settled in.  Sunday we had beautiful weather and so we even had a chance to go and enjoy the sunshine on the beach, which is right in our backyard pretty much, we are spoiled!
Here is a little tour of our humble abode

Our lovely patio all to ourselves

 Our room, that is our friend Wilhelmina in the fire place there

Our living room, you can see the entrance to our room through that doorway

 The Kitchen                                                The Guest room                          Hallway connecting the two

             


            THE BEACH!

(only a 5 min walk)

We have also already had our first house guests! Robyn and Brian are in the Netherlands right now on their way home from teaching english in Korea for the past year, it has been over a year since we have seen them and so it was wonderful to be reunited finally and in the Netherlands no less!! They came to Den Haag on Monday for the day and we had a great time showing them around a little and enjoying some lovely 'wine time' together:) They went back to Brian's relatives for a couple days but they are coming back tomorrow and staying with us for a week!! We are very excited, it will be really great to explore and spend             some time together.


In other news we had a chance the other week to visit a windmill museum inside of an old windmill and an old castle ruin, courtesy of my dad's cousin Peter who we were staying with. It was pretty cool and so here are few pictures from that.

 The Windmill

 The Ruins

I may not blog for a little while as we will be out and about with Robyn and Brian for the next week and then on Oct 27th we are off to Dublin to meet up with  Alicia!!! We will have lots of stories and pictures after I am sure, so until then..

Doi!
Megan & Joel