The Netherlands and Belgium

This past week I spent a couple days in The Netherlands and a day in Belgium.  This quick trip was inspired by a dream I had a couple weeks ago of eating Belgium waffles, so I decided as soon as I was done with my dissertation I would go to Belgium and eat one.  I also recently found out that there was a temple in The Hague, Netherlands, and I really wanted to go see it.  When I was little, I decided that I wanted to see every temple in the world, which back that was a little more possible.  Although now it's not likely I'll reach that goal, I'd still like to see as many as possible, and this temple was #25 out of 144 that I've been able to see.
My first day I flew into Amsterdam, but I only had 1/2 hour to walk around the city.  I'm not going to lie, I wasn't uber impressed.  I've heard so many people say how much they loved Amsterdam, but it just seemed like a normal big city to me.  After that I went to see De Haar Castle.

Day #2 was my favorite.  In the morning I went to Keukenhof, a big flower garden that is only open 2 months every year.  It was so beautiful!  There were so many different colors!

In the afternoon I went to the temple and that was so lovely.  The people there were so nice and even though it was a really small temple, it was very busy!

On my last day I went to Belgium.  There I discovered the best snack for strolling the city:  chocolate covered strawberries!  I did end up having the waffle that inspired the trip, but I didn't like it!  Belgium was nice to stroll around, a very pretty city.  I also went to a musical instrument museum, which was fun because it had instruments from all over the world and from all different eras, and they gave you headphones so you could listen to what these instruments actually sounded like when playing a song.  There were so many fun and beautiful sounds, but maybe this little flute was my favorite.  I also spent a bit of time in an art museum, and these are the pieces I liked best from what I saw.