Goodbye for now Europe.

Guess who's back finally? Moi! Of course, now that we're back it feels as if we never left. We had an amazing time. Quick recap time: Paris (as previously mentioned) was amazing. We packed every day full of activities and visited most of the obvious places (Versailles, Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, Pantheon, etc etc) and other cute little places and shops. La
Droguerie was particularly awesome. Ate delicious food everyday. I think food was the highlight of our trip.

WWOOFing in Burgundy was really relaxing and fun. We were there for just under 2 week. We did a lot of weeding, cherry picking, some petting of Winky the pony and chasing of the three goats, and lots and lots of delicious eating. DRROOL. We were also given free reign to use their slightly sketchy early 1990s red Citroen to drive around and visit the french countryside and other small villages nearby. That was really fun. Each day we worked in the morning from around 9am-1pm, stopped at 11am for a break known as a "smoko" (referring to a smoke break, though none of us smoked). We'd usually have tea and madeleines/cookies/butter cake for a snack, then work some more until 1pm, when we'd have a consistently delicious lunch made by our talented host Evelyne. Then we'd chill the rest of the afternoon, either go for a driving adventure (we visited Chablis, flea markets at local villages, a castle, etc), or read in the sun all afternoon, or go for a walk. It was really nice.

After WWOOFing, we went to Paris for 2 more days to do the things we missed the first time/wanted to do again. Then we took a high speed train to Brussels, where we went to the awesome Bozar, the Centre for Fine Arts. They have a cool film archive and cinema where they're always screening cool old movies. It was gloomy out, so we watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which happened to be playing. We also got lucky and got some great tickets to a free performance by the Brussels Symphony Orchestra. That was neat.

The next day we took the train to Brugge. Brugge is really cute, with winding canals, quiet streets, and fun places to bike. Apparently its the most visited city in Europe by Europeans. Or something like that. Either way, we were there when it wasn't quite super busy, and it was very nice and relaxing after bustling Paris and Brussels. We rented bikes and biked all over the place.

Then we took the train to Amsterdam, where we stayed for a week. We really loved Amsterdam as well. The entire time we were there we kept asking ourselves which we liked better, Paris or Amsterdam. I still haven't decided. Paris wins on the market and gourmet food front, but Amsterdam is more chill with all the canals and bikes bikes everywhere! And I think Amsterdam is younger and hipper. I'd die of happiness if I could have a house on a canal with my own boat to putter along the canals in. We rented bikes to explore the city and bike to another small town outside of Amsterdam. That was really fun, though my derriere was in pain the next day.

And here's a video of Winky the pony and the goats on the farm. And some poor french.

Alright, so that wasn't a quick recap. I apologize.

It may be cliché, but: Paris je t'aime.

Paris, c'est merveilleux. We're actually wrapping up our first week WWOOFing in Burgundy maintenant, which is tres bon, and includes delicious food, a pony named Winky, 3 hilarious chèvre, lots of weeding, and picking cherries. But I've only uploaded some photos from Paris onto Flickr, so this is a visual preview of some of the fun we had there. I loved it so much. I think we might actually leave Burgundy a day or so early so that we can spend a bit more time in Paris while on our way to Belgium.