Drains R' Us: Heading Home to Holland

After a long day in Paris, no one was anxious to go back to the hustle and bustle. We had seen everything Garth and Preston wanted to see, so I guess I will have to come back to the Musee d'Orsay (where the Impressionist paintings are) another time. We decided to stop at a couple of places on the way home. Our first stop was at Chantilly. They have a grass horse race track where they have a big horse race every year with 3 year old Arabian horses.

There is also the Chantilly Chateau (castle). It was a beautiful chateau and so different from the ones we had seen in Germany and Belgium.

Here is proof that Garth is secure in his manhood, he actually put the flower behind his ears himself and he is thinking of turning in his Chevy Avalanche for a Mini Cooper next year. What will be next, will he give up his favorite chair and sports?

It was a long walk to the chateau and we decided we just wanted to walk around the gardens, not inside. Well, did we get ripped off! Most of the gardens were being redone and there wasn't anything to see.

Naturally, Jip and Preston were drawn to the mote to check out the fish in it. If only we had had some bread to feed them instead of just rocks.

We walked and walked and couldn't even find a place to stop and have a drink that wasn't a complete rip off. We figured that in a few years it would be a good place to come visit when the trees had gotten big but they definitely shouldn't have charged us 5 euros to get in. I guess we should have figured something was up when there was hardly anyone else around. Here's the view of the master's house

and here's the view of the servant's house.

It really was a pretty chateau and so we had to take a few more pictures before we left because Preston was just dying to have his picture taken.

We made another stop at Ghent, Belgium and we were so impressed with this city. My guidebook said that it was a medieval city that hadn't been touched by tourism yet. Well we agreed with that because there was a lack of souvenir shops, but the day we were there it was packed with people. Every town and village has a fun fair one weekend in the summer and this was the weekend for Ghent's fun fair.

Everywhere we turned there were beautiful sites - amazing buildings, churches and food booths.

We didn't go in any churches because as I have told you, Preston is done seeing the inside of them.

There were street performers and several large stages set up with performers at them, many of which were really good. It was great to hear these bagpipes echoing through this ancient city.

These pictures of Garth and I are from the same bridge just looking different directions from it.

Right in the middle of town and just down the street from the french fry shop was this amazing old castle. Garth said there were tons of castles just like it in England, but I am always impressed by the endless number of castles here.

We had to make a snack/drink stop and went to this shop that was recommended to us by a young girl we met on the street handing out fliers. I'm not sure if you know that french fries were invented by the Belgium's and not the French as was mayonnaise. After getting a "snack" (it was more like a meal) of french fries which come complete with mayonnaise (I guess they felt as though their two great contributions to the culinary world needed to be put together and they are quite good), we headed down to take a look at the castle.