The Milliquet's

Today was a long day of driving back to the Netherlands following a fun hour spent having breakfast with Marie Soleil.  Again the weather was good and we were only slowed a couple times by traffic and road work as we crossed Belgium.  Mid afternoon we made it back to Utrecht and returned the rental car before catching a train to Leiden.  The previous train had been cancelled so our train was filled past the seating capacity and we ended up stuck in the sweltering overflow area. Sweaty and a bit tired we arrived in Leiden to the welcoming arms of nearly 20 of Tori's family members.  After a bunch of hugs and hellos we dropped our bags at one of the air bnbs and went for dinner.  The evening wrapped up with a few drinks at Jim, Caroline, Jeanie and Joanie's airbnb.

We rented a car and headed across Belgium and down to Reims, France.   The weather was spectacular and the drive was gorgeous as we rolled across the hills to see Scott's good friend Marie-Soleil referee at the women's world cup. Arriving we checked into our less than spectacular hotel and went into the city centre.  We explored the Notre Dame de Reims cathedral which was very spectacular and had very few tourists checking it out.  We then wandered around the streets of the town before stopping for a dinner of a charcuterie platter and champagne. After dinner we made our way over to the stadium and made the most of the VIP experience provided with our tickets.  Free beer, champagne and hor d’oeuvres were enjoyed throughout the match.  The match itself was exciting as South Korea against our intuition took the majority of the game to Norway.  Norway escaped with a 2-1 penalties as a result of two correctly called penalties paired with South Korea's ...

We rented bikes and visited some of the sites around Utrecht.  Our first stop was at the very impressive Castle de Haar.  Some form of a castle has existed since the mid 1300s while the current form is mostly due to a restoration in 1892.  We spent quite a while walking around the enormous castle grounds and rejuvenating ourselves with an ice cream. Eventually we left the castle and headed to the much smaller Zuylen castle.  Unfortunately by the time we arrived the grounds were closing and we were only able to get a view from the outside.  It was an impressive place though a much smaller building and property.  We worked our way back into town and stopped to visit, again from the outside, the unesco world heritage, Rietveld Schröder House.  This house built in 1921 was one of the first of the modern movement and to this day would easily fit in with the houses of modern Scandanavian design.  It was one of the first houses to uses movable interi...