Wednesday was our one-month anniversary! Go us!!
So anyway, we took a train from Oostende to Köln in the morning, and met Josh’s mom at the Hauptbahnhof; it would be nice to see the city in the summertime, but we’ve kept things low-key here while we rest up a bit! We’ve slept in, visited Josh’s grandmother to show her some wedding photos, caught up on emails, explored an Ahr valley winery, and biked into nearby Siegburg for cheese from the jaw-dropping counter in the outdoor market. On Friday Dorothee and Stephan threw a wedding-celebration-party for the German family and friends who couldn’t make it to NY in July, and it was great to catch up with some folks and meet others. Today we were at another wedding celebration for a German friend who married a guy from Pennsylvania, and enjoyed a marvelous sunny afternoon with champagne, cake, and boules (practice for when we’re in Provence this week!). It feels great to be rested up for the next half of our adventure, which we embark upon early tomorrow morning!

Yesterday we made our way to the coastal Belgian town of Koksijde, where some old friends from Germany have a vacation apartment they kindly let us use. The apartment is right on the beach, totally great! Koksijde is hosting the Flanders Lady’s Trophy tennis tournament, so we spent some time watching a few games – played right in the town square. We strolled along the beach, flew a kite, had some frites (with mayo, of course) and relaxed. Today we took the train to Bruges (or Brugge if you’re from around here) for a (rainy) day trip. After some sight seeing and a great tour of the town’s only brewery, Haalve Maan – complete with complimentary glass of beer – the rain made us call it a day. We may have been a bit rained out in the Low Countries, but we’ve enjoyed this part of the trip; tomorrow it’s on to Cologne!

On Friday we took a cross-country train from Berlin to Haarlem for a weekend in the Netherlands. We visited Amsterdam on Saturday, when it rained allll day. It’s an interesting (and quite beautiful!) city, but with all the partying, not really our style. It didn’t help that we came back to our B&B soaking wet! Today was much sunnier, so we rented bikes and roamed from Haarlem to the coast, down the beach and through farmland and beech forests to the famous tulip fields – empty now that it’s August, but in a gorgeous landscape. A gorgeous sunset over the canal in front of our B&B is a high note to our time here, and tomorrow it’s off to Belgium!

Hallo everyone!
We took a (horrible) Ryanair flight from Edinburgh to Berlin on Monday morning, but it’s been easily forgotten by the great time we’ve had in Germany’s capital. We’ve spent the past 4 days exploring the city and both know we want to come back- it’s an amazing place.
We did a little of everything, trying to cram as much touristy and non-touristy stuff in as possible: Brandenburger Tor, the Jewish memorial, Unter den Linden, the Tiergarten; visits on ‘Museum Island’ to a few of the amazing antiquities museums; drinks at a Bier Garten; a bike tour of Potsdam; swimming in Schlachtensee, and much more. It’s been great, if only we had more time!
We’ve been lucky enough to stay at good family friends’ apartment in the city, which made the trip even better. We cooked dinner for ourselves for the first time in 3 weeks Tuesday night. Very strange.
Tomorrow we catch an early morning ‘InterCity’ express train to Amsterdam. So until next post(card), auf wiedersehen!

A photo essay featuring Josh in Great Britain’s iconic phone booths.

Enjoy.