My Travel Diaries ...: January 2015

Well post our awesome stay in Amsterdam, we headed to Brugge..a very hyped location, recently made popular by the bollywood movie PK (but we had already planned this trip before this movie released)!!...It was a beautiful morning and we were very excited for our next lap, but our excitement was cut short when our car broke down some 5 kms before Brugge in a small scenic town called Damme...
Thankfully we had the ADAC Premium Insurance, and within the next 90 mins our car was towed and we were being transported to our hotel on a trailer. Well, looking my car being towed in the camera, was just heart breaking:(
The next 36 hours, were spent on phone testing our patience with ADAC and Touring.be customer service staff!!.. I don"t want to get into the details here and relive those moments, when we were stranded helpless in a foreign country on a weekend during winters (deadly combo, i tell you)..eventually we got our car back after a week, by making one more trip to brugge and shelling out around 900 Euros..(yeah, it turned out to be that expensive, but all"s well that ends well)...
Despite the dark weather and dull mood, we decided to make the most of the trip and enjoy the place as much as we could....We did meet some really nice people (salesman at the Move Brugge garage, who even dropped us to the city centre; few very friendly locals who helped us navigate our way through the busy city centre and we also enjoyed some free bus rides, as it was the shopping week in Brugge).

Usually I need to spend some time at a place before I decide if I like it or not, if i would like to visit it again or not; but despite the very short time that we had spent int he city, I loved it and would really want to come back again, soon..hopefully in Summers this time!! The strikingly beautifully buildings and canals, makes it a picturesque city that I am looking forward to visiting soon:)

Some memorable moments from this trip:

Belfry tower in the middle of the city centre

Grote Market

Market Square

Picturesque Canals

Minnewater-Lake of Love

The city's buildings and architecture is just marvellous

Minnewater

Belgian pralines...though we didnt have any on this trip..how sad is that!!

beautifully adorned city centre!

Houses on the banks of canals with a boat parked is a common sight in Amsterdam

Finally, the Christmas holidays are here and this time after living away from my hubby, Anmol for three months(I relocated to Duesseldorf to take up a job in Sept 2014, and currently live 280 kms away from hubby dear ), I was eagerly waiting for the vacations. Just the thought of spending 10 consecutive days with him felt so exciting. And to top it, we had planned our first cross country road trip, covering two countries (that I would be visiting for the first time)- Amsterdam (Holland) and Brugge & Brussels (could not visit it on this trip though!) in Belgium. Excitement, excitement everywhere:)

Anmol already reached Duesseldorf on the 18th Dec and we had started planning and packing (just me..my better half prefers doing it just few hours before the trip, which drives me crazy, so I took the undertaking alone) for the trip.

On 24th morning, I got up at 7, got ready and packed some veg-sandwiches for us and started our journey at 9am.

Amsterdam is around 236 kms away from Duesseldorf and took us around 2.5 hours to reach there (My husband drives more than this every weekend to visit me). The drive was pleasant and though it rained most part of the journey, it was not very tiring (I enjoyed some soothing music along the ride, and Anmol was not stressed too, despite it being his first trip outside Germanz), though he was lamenting that the highways were not as cool as we have in Germany (the speed limit was 120kmph and on some streches 100kmph). We reached our hotel at around 11:40.We stayed at the Best Western Blue Amsterdam , which was slightly outside the main city but well connected to the city centre by bus and tram. The Hotel staff was very friendly and we bought our two day city pass at the hotel and also took the city maps from the receptionist (and she gave us some nice suggestions as well). After resting for a while and grabbing a falafal sandwich for lunch, we headed to our first destination- Zaanse Schans

How to reach Zaanse Schans from Amsterdam:

Zaanse Schans is a stone throw"s away from Amsterdam. We took the bus 391 from the Amsterdam Centraal. The journey takes 40 mins and costs 7 Euros for return trip and drops you right outside zaanse schans.

Train is also an option, and the nearest station is Koog-Zaandijk (from where it is 15 min walk. The train from Amsterdam Central Station takes 17 minutes.

We left Amsterdam Centraal at around 2.45pm and reached Zaanse Schans at 3.30pm. The moment we entered, a friendly guy asked us to smile and took a candid pic, which later we could buy as a souvenir (smart business idea, but he was good!).

As soon as we crossed the entrance, we were bowled over by this picturesque location..A small village on the bank of Zaan river with the backdrop of huge wooden windmills, makes for an extraordinarily beautiful sight.
We visited the Cheese factory and tasted some delicious Dutch cheese, I liked pesto gouda the most:)

(Fun fact: Gouda cheese is named after the city of Gouda in the Netherlands).

We headed back to our hotel in Amsterdam at 6pm. It was a great start to the trip!

The next two days we spent touring around the city (using a 48 hours city pass) and visiting some amazing places. There were a lot of FIRSTS for me on this trip, and I would let the pictures do the talking:)

Amsterdam central

View from Amsterdam Central, from where we boarded to bus for Zaanse Schans

On the bus to Zaanse Schans:)

The beautiful view at Zaanse Schans

Inside the cheese factory at zaanse schans

shoe factory at zaanse schans, which got closed by the time we reached

Beautiful Amsterdam at night! Right outside the central station

Amsterdam Central at Night

The dazzling city, during the festival of light

The Popular Dutch Fries..

Hubby with the jumbo fries-
ME (while deciding which one to buy)- Lets go for small, that would be enough too
Hubby: when you do something, do it right. We will go with Jumbo, nothing less..and with Mayo (paid a euro for just for it, talk about being touristy!)

After 7-8 mins, Hubby: I hate these fries, they are soo soggy now, n there is no salt
ME: I am sick of these now, so I wont have it either
Eventually at the end we had to throw away the jumbo fries.....talk about doing it right!!

private boats..a very common sight in the Amsterdam!

Diamond musuem..well nothing too special, just the too expensive diamonds made me feel so....

Museumplein..behind Rijksmuseum
After fighting the crowd in front of the logo, my husband testing my patience-after multiple photos i took of him, and after each shot, he used to give me a blank look which screamed "why can"t you take decent pic which could have me (zoomed in) and also the entire logo"...i finally realized that it was better to try a shot from the stairs adjacent the ice rink, and voila!! i got this beautiful shot..and i do have some clicks with my pleased hubby in it as well:)