Walking Off Donuts

Tuesday, March 24 was our last day together in Portland. On Wednesday, Paul returned to Pittsburgh while I went on to attend the ACRL Conference. We wanted to get some more hiking in, so we took the advice of Nico again and explored the area of 21st and 23rd street in Portland's northwest quadrant before heading to the nearby park. We managed to snag our first (and only) Blue Star Donut: blueberry filling with a peanut butter powder coating. Mmm:

To work off that donut, we walked for a few hours in Forest Park and enjoyed the lush greenery while it alternated between rain and sun:

 

Forest Park is impressively large. We wandered along the Wildwood Trail which "meanders for 30.2 breathtaking miles" according to the Forest Park Conservancy website. It was lovely and wonderfully relaxing - just the way a vacation should be.

The Last Day

On the last day of our trip, we visited Kilkenny, which Rick Steves says is "often called Ireland's finest medieval town."  While wandering into town we noticed this little eatery with a great name:

Crazy though it may seem, we did not avail ourselves of the sandwiches.

Kilkenny has a picturesque castle:

Front View

Back  View

Paul made friends with Indiana Jones:

We also saw quite a few bookmakers in Ireland.  At first I was all "that's so awesome, look at all these small independent book making shops!"  But then I realized I didn't quite understand the meaning of the term 'bookmaker':

We decided to enjoy one last kebab as dinner for the train ride back to Dublin:

where we were greeted by the friendly cat residing in the Airbnb place in which we were staying.  He made himself right at home in our room:

Much to do in Amsterdam

Let's start with our arrival in Amsterdam - the train station is quite a lovely building:

Amsterdam has tons of canals and is like a thriving Venice where non-tourists actually still live.  Many of the canals are lined with houseboats:

There are tons of things to do in Amsterdam.  There are museums for everything - Dutch artists (we went to the Rijksmuseum), cheese (we walked past one of these but opted not to visit), and houseboats:

Paul is right at home in the living room

This particular houseboat had an incredibly tiny living area for the skipper and family from the days when it was still used for shipping freight.  The sleeping areas were incredibly small.  You can't really tell, but I'm on my knees in this picture and the bed to my side would have slept two children.  It isn't much bigger than what you can see, and the double bed on the other side was only slightly bigger than that.  There's no way a person my height, let alone taller, could have stretched out in that bed.

While wandering around Amsterdam, Paul commented that Pittsburgh needs restaurant areas like these:

Nice, shady spaces lined with trees and tons of outdoor eating.  We opted not to eat there, however, because instead, we ate in the public library.  We had dinner on the 7th floor, complete with beer!

For the record, we shared the entire meal.  I did not eat an entire pizza and a salad!

The lovely view from the library that you can sort of see in the photo above:

And I just cannot help myself.  Here are a bunch of neat photos from inside the library:

And to end, a Kate and Paul picture:

Nijmegen Addendum

Paul reminded me that I forgot to mention the cafe/pub at which we ate dinner both evenings in Nijmegen.  Paul read about it on a Reddit forum for the town, and we are so glad he did.  It's called The Blue Hand (Cafe In De Blaauwe Hand).  It had great beer - Paul tried a local beer supposedly made only for this cafe: Rooie something or other.  Yum!

The two wood boards in the photo above contain Flammkuchen.  According to the English menu, "It was dubbed Flammkuchen from the days when bakers used thinly rolled bread dough to gauge the temperature of the wood-fired ovens. Innovative bakers began to top off this dough with sour cream and other ingredients, and the Flammkuchen was born."  We tried a Mexican one but liked the sour cream, leek, and bacon one the best.  Delicious!  We also had a fried food mix the first night:

The second night, we tried the soup of the day, which was a surprisingly delicious lentil soup, and some more Flammkuchen. 

If you ever find yourself in Nijmegen, you must try this place.  Definitely one of our favorites from the trip for the food, beer, and ambiance.  As a bonus, it was not overrun with tourists.  

Somewhere in the Netherlands

After rearranging the end of our trip, we found that we had a few extra days.  We wanted to find somewhere off the beaten path in the Netherlands (our 10th country of the trip!) - somewhere that would be good for outdoorsy adventures.  While in Germany, we ran into folks from Holland (which actually just refers to a small part of the Netherlands, although people seem to use it interchangeably with "Netherlands" as well, which was confusing), and one of the places they recommended was Nijmegen.

While researching Nijmegen, we learned that it is the location for the Netherlands' biggest festival (a Wikipedia article calls it the International Four Days Marches Nijmegen), which would start the day we planned to leave Nijmegen (July 13).  Apparently, the city swells from 160,000 people to 1.6 million people or more for this marching festival during which people walk anywhere from 30-50 km per day.  We thought it could be interesting to see a city setting up for such a huge influx of people, so off we went.

The first thing we discovered was that our fancy-sounding room was not so fancy.  The online description said it included a spiral staircase.  It did, they weren't lying, but it didn't go anywhere.  It just took up space in the room:

As we wandered around, we learned that the Netherlands apparently has a problem with drunk men peeing all over the place during large festivals.  To combat this, they had these plastic urinals set up everywhere (the sign on the right warns people not to pee in public... and is located rather close to the urinals?):

We also noticed they were making great use of existing structures - using this old ruin to set up a stage:

I also finally took a picture of a Doner kebab.  These are all over Europe, and we've eaten at several:

Our main goal for Nijmegen was to get out and enjoy nature.  To this end, we took a long walk past some interesting sites.  These permanent houseboats lined one of the rivers we passed:

We also saw some horses:

and fields of wildflowers:

and some really big plants:

Lastly, to kill time one evening, we wandered around looking in shop windows.  This particular fashion statement caught our attention:

Brugge: The City of Beer, Chocolate, and Frites

Brugge was sweet.  Quite literally.  We ate a lot of sweets there, including waffles:

with whipped cream - Paul preferred this one

with chocolate - I preferred this one

and delicious chocolates:

This particular bag was from The Chocolate Line, which is known for its odd chocolate flavors.  Paul tried:

• Apple, which was described as "Caramel with apple balsamic vinegar and a praline with 'Granny Smith' green apple
• Paola: "Gianduja with a crown of caramelized hazelnuts"
• Piaf: "Marzipan with pieces of orange marinated in Cointreau"

I tried to be a bit more adventurous with:

• Earl Grey: "Milk chocolate ganache with Earl Grey tea"
• Chili: "Bitter ganache and marzipan with slightly smoked 'Espelette' chilli pepper"
• Miss Piggy: "Milk chocolate with almond praline and cripsy bacon with quinoa" - If you look closely, you can see this one in the picture.  It has a little pig face on it and says "bacon."

We both agreed that they were all quite delicious.  We opted not to try the cigar chocolate that contained tobacco leaves or the one that contained fried onion or the one labelled "Wasabi."  There was also one with a marijuana leaf on it in the store, but I don't see that one in the brochure.  Hmmm....

Don't worry, though, we got plenty of exercise to work off all this food.  The Airbnb place at which we stayed had two loaner bikes, so we took a ride around town:

All the park benches in Brugge seem to have dragons as supports - pretty neat!

Then we biked out into the countryside

And saw some sheep:

On our way back, the bridge was up.  Paul was amused at this unique method of raising a bridge:

Later, we took a boat tour of the canals

Paul claimed a monastery (as if he weren't already winning Carcassonne):

And we toured a brewery

that had a great view

And finally, we really liked this parking lot for bikes - clearly the best way to get around Brugge:

Flowers, Figures, and Food in Füssen

[Third and final guest blog post from Liz]

And finally, my last blog post on Füssen!  No specific topic this time, just a few of my general observations.

The wildflowers in Füssen were a treat for me, and I took pictures of many, some known and some unknown.  Here's some of the better pictures, for those of you interested in plants.

A wild rose at the base of the Pollat waterfall by Neuschwanstein.

An unknown type of orchid.

Wild strawberries!  Unfortunately, they're too small and full of seeds to be really good for eating. 

Forget-me-nots, identified by Kate.

Something purple?

Füssen also had an interesting variety of sculpture, some old and some modern.  It was always a pleasant surprise to come upon one of these while wandering the town's small streets.  This first is a video of an interesting arrangement they had before the tourist information building.  The sculpture is several pillars of granite, with smaller spinning blocks of granite atop each one.  According to Rick Steves, they're purely powered by the water, and the spinning heads are supposed to represent friendly people talking with each other.

This statute was at Hohenschwangau, and looks like Robin Hood to me.

Reading girls.

This guy is a representative of an old lute making family in Füssen.  

I'm not exactly sure why, but this sad-looking girl represents the friendship between Füssen and another city in Japan.

And finally, a small mention of our favorite place to eat breakfast at in Füssen:  Gefühl Für Brot!  This translates into "The Feel for Bread," I believe, as exemplified by their fun sign.

And that's all from me!  I had a wonderful time traveling with Kate and Paul.  At this point in their trip, they're old pros at this whole Europe travel thing, and kindly tolerated my whole "This is sooo cool!" reaction to every thing.  : )  Thanks for everything, guys, I miss you already!