Back in Paris now, we just got back from dinner and we're packing and hanging out in our 15th floor suite! We got upgraded when we checked in and we have a sweet suite! (pun intended)!

We realize we've been a little bad at filling you in on where we've been and what we've been doing since we last left Paris… so we'll try and catch you up now!

So- Amsterdam was definitely fun times! Like I said in the first Amsterdam post- the first day we just walked around and had a nice dinner. The first day we just walked around, went to the Anne Frank Haus, saw the flower market, the outskirts of the red light district and had a nice dinner. We'd had a late night in Paris the night before so we were both kinda tired. The second day we had better intentions of seeing more of the city!

We started out our day with breakfast in the executive lounge. Because Katherine travels so much and has premiere status like everywhere we got access to the executive lounge where we could get drinks anytime, breakfast and they had happy hour, appetizers and desserts in the evenings… After breakfast, we went to the Van Gough Museum which we both rank top on our list of sites we've seen. We got to see the real "Sunflowers" and many other famous Van Gough's including the most famous one to us - the "Field of Irises" which is very popular with all Kappas! We saw a few Picasso's and even some Monet's too! Just unreal that we were seeing real paintings and not reproductions! It really took us both back far more than I believe we thought it would. We both got a little choked up at the Iris painting just because almost every Kappa we know has or had it in their house somewhere! We did some damage at the gift shop, then tried to head to the Heineken experience for a tour. We found out it was under renovation so we headed back to our hotel to drop off our tourist purchases and head into the city centre of Amsterdam!

We enjoyed dinner at a café that was recommended to us on one of the canals and then walked all over the city! We saw several beautiful churches, a billion and one bikes, the Dam Square, Auld Kirk, the Red Light District, the "coffeeshops" and several interesting people. Dinner that night was at a Thai place where we met two Americans that we ended up hanging out with the whole night. They also went to high school together and were on a Europe trip on one of the guy's miles from his job! It was a fun, but late night!

Thursday morning, we took our time getting up. We had plans to go on a canal tour and to try and see more of Amsterdam but we ended up sleeping in until really late, and got up just in time to get packed up and head to the train station. We grabbed cheese sandwiches at the train station and boarded the train for Brussels.

Once we arrived in Brussels, we got checked in and headed out to tour around a bit. Our hotel was really centrally located and so we got to see the Grand Place, the Manakin Pis and a several other beautiful churches. We had a hard time finding the "fox" in one of the buildings in the Grand Place - we'll upload the picture soon- but we were looking for a giant huge fox and it's this tiny guy who's not shiny anymore and very well hidden in the buildings façade! We came back to the hotel and got dressed up to go out with some of Katherine's co-workers! We drove to Leuven which we LOVED~! It's this cute tiny town outside of Brussels where there is an adorable city centre and several bars/cafes and eateries! We went to this one bar that was a ton of fun! All of Katherine's co-workers were amazing! We rode out there with one of them and took a taxi home. Here comes funny story from Belgium number one! Our silly cab driver who we've determined was blind and dumb - got lost! That's right- super lost! It only should have taken 30 minutes tops to get back to the Marriott and an hour and half later found us driving around in circles in Belgium only a few streets away from the hotel, but not sure how to get to it! He was completely incompetent! AND.. HE HAD A TOM-TOM NAVAGATION SYSTEM! We couldn't figure out how/why he didn't put in the address when we gave it to him a number of times! He just kept saying "I no know" UGH! Needless to say, we didn't get home until after 4 am! CRAZY!

Friday morning, we had plans to meet up with my friend Patty's friend Paul who lives in Belgium. He was going to show us around after we had lunch together. We talked to him, found out where we were to meet and headed out around 1:30 to find Luxembourg Square - which was around where all the embassies were located! It was about a 35 minute walk through town which was nice b/c we got a little mini tour of Brussels. We got to the café/bar - called Fat Boys where we met Junior! Our favorite bartender in all of Europe! Paul ended up being like two hours late - so we got to know Junior really really well! When Paul finally got there, we went onto an Irish bar a little bit near there that was busy in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday! We hung out, tried some Belgian beers and I ended up playing Texas Hold'em Poker with 4 guys who lived in Brussels. It was quite an afternoon. We met up with Mike back at the hotel, grabbed some dinner and went to bed fairly early!

Saturday was a really busy day! Like I already said- we went to Gent to see the castle, Gravensteen! It was quite interesting to see all the torture devices they used with the castle was very interesting. We got lots of fun pictures from the top of the towers! We enjoyed a very traditional Belgian lunch and some more Belgian beers before boarding the train back to Leuven where we'd planned to tour the Stella Factory! We Schruted that one badly! But we still got to sit in the city centre square, have dinner and drink more beer! If you're noticing a trend about our time in Brussels, you're pretty smart! We drank a lot of beer! It's the countries favorite past time! J

Like I mentioned in the last post- we went out to celebrate Mike's birthday last night and went to an Irish pub that was crazy fun! Then this morning, we toured a chocolate factory, bought some souvenirs and had a nice long leisurely lunch outside on a cobblestone street near the Grand Place before we took the train back here to Paris! Only to find out we'd been upgraded to our fabulous suite! Which brings me back to the beginning! We're hanging out in our awesome suite! Just packing and organizing our thoughts and stuff for tomorrow! We have a big day of Paris touring to do tomorrow and tomorrow night- we have nice dinner plans and we're going to the Moulin Rouge! We're both so excited, that we're acting like little girls! Hope this was a better update!

We'll let ya know how our big last day in Paris goes before we fly home on Tuesday afternoon! Miss everyone!