The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Late running trains from Amsterdam meant we didn’t get to see much on our first day, but so far it seems to be a very picturesque European town with interesting buildings and restaurants.

We plan to see what we can discover on Saturday by taking some long cold walks around the town.

After about 30 hours of travel chaos, we have finally arrived in London. Just in time to relax a bit before New Year’s festivities begin.

Saturday morning was supposed to be an early Eurostar trip from Amsterdam to London, but all trains ended up being cancelled for the day. This was due to a broken pipe in the Thames river (not the English Channel) that was filling the tunnel with water.

There weren’t going to be any trains on Sunday from Amsterdam and there were high winds, so we weren’t confident that flights would run either.

So, we took a train to the big Eurostar hub in Brussels, spent the night in a hotel… after quite a few failed attempts to book a new train for Sunday.

Sunday morning started early with a queue growing well before employees started working. Everyone’s goal is to get to London today, but of course the trains were probably already booked for people who were planning on travelling today.

Hopefully the next post will be from London for New Years Eve celebrations.

We took a short hike up to the famous observatory in LA today. Look at all of the movies it has been in and the science at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffith_Observatory?wprov=sfti1#

When a little “lending library “ is painted in the style of Mondrian, then you must be in the Netherlands.

To go along with the highland cows, we have wild horses too. They’re both in a park near our place.

This is a city in France that has a mix of German and French heritage, like the similar small towns we’ve seen this week. The cheese I’m carving is a raclette, which was a meal when added with small potatoes and vegetables. The map shows where some good wines are from in the area.

We have visited Eguisheim, which is a medieval village with preserved half-timbered houses, as are all of the towns we have been in this week: Riquewihr, Kaysersberg, Turckheim, and our home base of Colmar.

We walked all around the towns and through a number of vineyards, up to a couple of castles, and unfortunately, along a couple of busy roads too (our navigation isn’t always perfect).

Less than a 10 minute walk from my house are some Highland cows, also known as Scottish cows. Tonight while walking the dog, we saw a few:

Once a year, the neighborhood in the south part of Amsterdam (Zuid) displays a variety of outdoor art. Here’s a few examples, with Piper modeling next to them, as always: