Brussels, Belgium 2015

We went to Brussels for our friends Birthday. We left for Brussels at around 5:00pm and the drive was suppose to be about 2 hours and 15 minutes. As soon as we hit the city what would have been a 10 minute drive to our hotel took 45 minutes. We got to the hotel around 8:00pm we stayed at the Hilton. Being that none of us had eaten dinner yet we went to get some dinner. We decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, Since we had a group of 12 people we had a 45 minute wait. It was great to have some real American style food after being in Germany for almost 7 months. After dinner we went to a bar called Delirium we got a Belgian beer called Floris Kriek it was a fruit beer that had a cherry taste. I am not a beer drinker but had to at least try a Belgian beer and that beer is definitely a beer I would get again. After the bar around half of us went back to the hotel. The next day we did the touristy things around the city.

              We visited the Grand Place square which is the main market square in Brussels

 This is the Manneken Pis which is a statue of a little boy peeing and he is dressed up in different clothes the day we were there he was dressed as a sailor.

                                                             Beautiful flower Garden

Brussels has a lot of old building and history to see but not really anything to go inside of we were able to see all of the touristy stuff in less than 2 hours. I had one request before leaving Brussels and that was to get a Belgian waffle and some Belgian chocolate. I had a waffle with chocolate syrup, strawberries and whip cream. It was good but I actually preferred the plan waffle with just a sugars syrup they put on it. For chocolate we went to two different store first we went to Chocopolis and the other I'm actually not sure of the name. We got a bunch of chocolate and some macaroons as well. We had a fun and quick trip to Brussels. That makes two new countries this year and Im hoping to add more.

Manderscheid, Germany 2015

Today we went to the town of Manderscheid to see the two castles they have there. Manderscheid is about a 35 minute drive from where we live so it made a nice day trip. It was a beautiful day here in Germany 66˚ and sunny which is rare. The drive was pretty easy besides the extreme curves of the German roadways. We made it to Manderscheid with no problem but our issue was trying to figure out how to get to the parking area and then to the burgs. We ended up parking in a church/ cemetary parking lot. No one was there so it wasn't a problem.

 We found our way to the path that lead to the smaller of the two burgs. Of course I wore the wrong type of shoes for the excursion. We made it to Oberburg which was built in the 900s according to the pamphlet we got they believe it was made out of wood first. You can go inside of the main tower and go to the top by climbing up about 1000 stairs.

 This is one of the smaller towers of Oberburg and you can climb up into it threw the bottom hole which is about 3-4 feet off the ground.

                                           Beautiful arch way around the side of the castle

 To get to the other castle, Niederburg you have to walk down a trail then across a field and then over a river.
                                      

                                          View of the river from the entrance to Niederburg

Niederburg was built around 1200. During the 30 year war the castle was heavily damaged. Then in 1794 French troops destroyed the castle completely. 

                                           

                                    This is the view of Oberburg from the top of Niederburg

View of Niederburg from the path back up to the car.

The Niederburg castle was big and was still in pretty good condition for being a ruin. The castle had many rooms that were still intact. It took us about an hour and a half to see both castles. It was definitely worth the drive.