After a long wait for summers and good holiday deals, we finalized our itinerary during last week of May. The trip was planned from 19th June till 26th June. This time we chose to stay at camping sites at the out skirts of Rome city centre and now I can say that it was a good decision as the camping was fun and we always had something to do after returning from our day trips from Rome and other places.

I found Rome very close and comparable to our India, particularly Delhi, in a number of ways. The weather, the people, their hospitality, familiar and pleasant smell of the soil after it rained, helping and fun loving nature of people, houses with roof top television antennas and scooters everywhere were some of the few similarities that we observed. We explored the rich history of Rome for three days followed by an afternoon at Ostia Antica beach. The weather was at our side most of the times except for the first day when it rained throughout the day and last day when we nearly fainted due the hot sunny day.

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Last week finally we got the opportunity to visit Dinant, which is a small town known for its natural beauty and some terrible historic events that happened there during late 1800s. Another relatively lesser know fact about this place is that Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone was also born and brought up in the vicinity of Citadel fort, which is a prominent tourist attraction in this region of Belgium.

It was a day trip. We left Brussels at around 10 AM and reached Dinant within an hour. Weather was very nice and sunny on that day. We started our tour by clicking some snaps of Citadel fort which was just about 400 meters from the station. Then we took a cable car tide to the top of the fort and spent a few hours there on the hill. Ranit had some great time on the swings in the play area for kids while we enjoyed the guided tour of the citadel fort. After getting down from Citadel we went to see the house of Adolphe Sax which still displays some of the original Saxophones that he made. We felt privileged for having got an opportunity to get some snaps clicked with the statue of Adolphe Sax.

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Finally its a weekend and we have no plans except for going to the fancy dress show in Ranit’s school. So I have some time to pen down some moments from our Paris trip that we did earlier this month.

We had a lot of expectations from our trip when we left for Paris from Brussels. It was the city that I had thought about visiting at least once in this life while I was in junior school and when I first saw that movie “An evening in Paris” starring Shammi Kapoor. Of-course I am lying. But yes it was indeed a place where I wanted to be at least once and after our 5 days stay in Paris Trust me it is worth visiting at least once in your life. So if you happen to be in Europe for sometime for work or anything like that, DON’T MISS IT.

We had got a good deal for staying in Paris for 4 nights. It was actually not in Paris but about 20 km out of it. However, the city is so well connected that you hardly realize it.

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It has been more than a month since our London trip ended but the memories of the trip are still so fresh as if it was Yesterday. So before my recollections of the trip fade away, I am putting it down in my travelog.

So the trip started with a very positive news from London about Simi & Rohit (My sis-in-law) getting blessed with a baby boy. I was excited to join them in London during these happy moments. Rajni and Ranit were already in London from past one month so seeing them after so long was itself a great feeling that I was looking forward to.

As usual we didn’t have a very well planned agenda for our 7 days of London sight seeing trips, as I was relying completely on Rohit for that. Thanks to Rohit for planning all our trips perfectly so that we can see as much of London as possible without exerting ourselves to death :-). It worked out very well for us and we will cherish the memories from that trip forever.

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The city of glamour, weed and fun, Amsterdam, was the last site that was on our agenda. Unlike Arun’s basic nature, he was very accommodating :-) and agreed to almost all our plans and gave up giving anymore advices for site seeing. We all surrendered to Rajni’s agenda of feeding grains to pigeons on dam square and get some snaps clicked on the giant “ I AMSTERDAM” structure, followed by a tour of famous red light district of Amsterdam.

After spending sometime at Dam Square we moved towards the Bloeman market which is known for wide variety of flowers and souvenirs items. We bought some small wooden shoes, small windmill replicas and famous cheese of Holland.

After that we started asking people about the “I AMSTERDAM” structure. Nobody seemed to knew about any such thing in Amsterdam. Eventually we got some hint about it that it was near “Rijks” museum. On the way to the Rijks museum we passed through the famous Vondel Park and clicked some snaps there. It was freezing cold in the park as it was open from all sides. We were surprised to see some people jogging there in shots and plane track suits.

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We had heard a lot about Netherlands wind mills that were built more than two centuries ago and are still into existence.For many centuries these windmills played an important role in the drainage & subsequent reclamation of the lands in NL. These windmills were already on our agenda for this weekend.

Arun checked the bus and train route and selected the best way to reach Kiderdijk. Bus was a little more convenient than train as it was the direct route. So we left for the bus stop from where we were to board the bus number 90 for Kinderdijk. I remember the bus number because it saved us some 40 € for the travel. For some reasons, that day it was free travel on that route so we didn’t have to pay anything for our trip to Kinderdijk. Arun was excited and could hardly control his happiness when the driver told him that it was a free day. I also had a similar or may be even more intense reaction when Arun told me about it.

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We were waiting for this long weekend from quite some time and finally it came with a bang. It was quite an event full weekend and will stay in our memories for a long long time.

The trip started with a little trouble as we boarded the wrong train from Brussels. The tickets that we had were for a normal train but we boarded the super fast (Thalys) train instead. Luckily the train manager was kind enough to let us go without charging us anything for boarding that train. He could have charged us around 50 Euros for this but he didn’t want to spoil our Christmas and allowed us to continue our journey. I love Christmas, god exists :-).

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Aquatopia is a popular educational attraction in central Antwerp, Belgium. It features a set of aquariums, along with recreations of other marine habitats, including swamps, rain forests, river deltas, and coral reefs. Aquatopia also includes a number of special exhibits covering sharks, nautilus, and mysteries of the deep.

We went to see Aquatopia with Arun and Anagha who were visting us from Netherlands. It was a nice trip and Ranit was so excited after seeing so many fishes and other sea animals. Shark show was amazing and after that show Ranit kept asking that if shark can eat dad if he jumps into that water. Ranit also managed to get a Dolphin puzzle as a gift from Arun and that kept Ranit busy for quite a few days. While I am writing this Ranit is busy assembling the same Dolphin puzzle.

Arun and Anagha, our family friends, visited us in Brussels and we decided to do a little site seeing while they were around. Brussels has grown from a 10th-century fortress town to a sizeable city. It has a lot of popular places that a lot of tourists come to see.

We started our site seeing from the famous Atomium which is in Hayzel and is not very from where we live in Brussels. Rajni cooked some Parathas and snacks to carry along for site seeing. Later that day we went to see this place called Grand Place which is at walking distance from our place. It was a day well spent with family and friends.

Here are some pics from the tour.