Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - Days 2 and 3

Hallo! Last week, I posted Day One of our trip to Europe over Christmas. Today, I will attempt to give a relatively quick, yet thorough recap of days two and three. We woke up at Megan and Todd's place in Eindhoven on Christmas Eve (Day two). They have an awesome tri-level, townhouse-ish rental just a short bike ride outside downtown Eindhoven. We hopped on our bikes and rode approximately 45 minutes to the neighboring town of Nuenen. Before exiting Eindhoven, we passed by the home of the local soccer club, PSV Eindhoven. The stadium can be seen below. In the team store, we purchased Baby Cattey an official PSV onesie.

We then continued our winding bike ride to the picturesque town of Nuenen. The town is famous for being the home of Van Gogh from 1883-1885. Below is his depiction of the church in town and then our photo of the same church. (Interestingly, we actually saw the original in Amsterdam at the end of our trip...things coming full circle.)

While in town, we ate lunch at a neat little cafe/bar where a gentlemen took a pretty decent picture of the four of us. In the town square, there is a statue of Van Gogh. We also rode to the famous windmill just outside the main square and took a few photos. The windmill is apparently famous enough that it is the only photo posted on Nuenen's Wikipedia page. As we were leaving, C and I partook in a Dutch tradition, Oliebollen. These fried dough balls covered in powdered sugar are sold at stands throughout the country during the holidays. It reminded me of a less cooked beignet, and it left a good deal of powdered sugar all over C's face.

On the way home, we went to the local grocery store, Albert Hiejn, to purchase our Christmas feast. It was good that we had four bikes, because each of us ended up with groceries strapped to ours. Obviously, I ended up with two twelve packs of beer bungied to my bike. I rode home extremely carefully. We had dinner reservations at a cafe in Eindhoven that served only two options, meat and vegetarian. Each couple shared one plate of pork tenderloin and one plate of brie with roasted vegetables. The pumpkin soup was excellent, as were the beers. At night, we went to a concert in town. The duo of Woody and Paul spoke entirely in Dutch but sang exclusively in English. It was odd knowing the lyrics better than anyone else at the venue, but not having any idea what was going on between songs...haha. Either way, it was a fun experience, and the music was decent. We then biked home in the rain and went to sleep while waiting for Santa.

Christmas Day, we woke up and walked to the park. In this picture, you can see me inspecting Todd's brand new soccer ball after their dog sunk her teeth into it. The four of us then spent the remainder of the day cooking, eating, drinking, dancing, and playing charades at their home. Their rental is great. Here are a few pictures of the place.

Unfortunately, C and I didn't have any real gifts to open because we tried to pack as lightly as possible. So, we had an idea to open the envelope containing the gender of our baby on Christmas day. It was probably the best gift anyway. For those of you who we speak with less frequently, see below:

After opening the envelope, C celebrated with a glass of raspberry/blueberry juice. Todd and I celebrated with a bottle of Hertog Jan. For better and for worse, Hertog Jan tastes like Miller High Life. Absolutely nothing special about it. Todd tells me Grolsch and Hertog Jan are sort of like PBR for the young dutch folks. Barely any bar or restaurant outside of Amsterdam even serves Heineken. The best part of Hertog Jan is clearly the label. The rest of the night, Megan, Todd and myself indulged in various fantastic Dutch and Belgian beers that Todd had purchased before our arrival. It was like beer heaven. A few of the chosen beers are shown below. The Westmalle and La Trappe beers are trappist, meaning they are brewed inside the walls of a monastery and the monks oversee the brewing process. I will explain more specifics about trappist beer in a later blog. The Westmalle tripel for example is generally regarded as one of the very best belgian tripels in the world, and wow, it did not disappoint. A few of the beers I took pictures of are featured below.

After a bit too much fun, the four of us crashed. It was a memorable Christmas on many levels. C and I had a fantastic time spending two days around Eindhoven. It was great to be tourists, but not in touristy places. And, Megan and Todd made sure we had fun the entire time. The next five days of our trip were much more hectic, but equally memorable. I should have plenty of good photos and good stories for those days as well. Until next time...