Gruenhundstrasse: Eines Tages. Drei Städte. Een dag. Drie steden. Un jour. Trois villes.

Eines Tages. Drei Städte. = German

Een dag. Drie steden. = Dutch

Un jour. Trois villes. = French

One day. Three cities. = English

It's pretty cool when you can spend time in three cities, in three countries, that speak three different languages, all in ONE DAY!

That's what we did on Columbus Day weekend!

City #1

Dusseldorf, Germany. Language = German

First thing you need to know about riding on the tram in Dusseldorf is that there are no fries or ketchup allowed.

What????

But somehow, Wolves can open their own bakeries.

So...we saw a statue of a guy on a horse. It was outside the Rathaus.

In Dusseldorf they have two parts of town. The old town where they have cute old buildings with bells on them...

and statues of guys sitting on heads playing ping pong?? (Okay, we're not sure about this guy...)

An old church of course...

With a fancy door with....chickens?

Here are the towers and stuff in the old town.

This is a bridge over the Rhine.

And they have leaves that are bigger than your face.

Moving to the new part of town....every good German city of any importance has its own weird T.V. tower.

This one is possibly used as a spaceship landing pad...

The aliens who landed in Dusseldorf prefer to stay in the strangely slanted buildings of the "Media Harbor."

And so there you have it...Now you know.

If you look closely, you can see the brightly colored aliens climbing up the side of this building...

This is not an alien. This is my mom. She is excited because she saw a boat named after her. (Yeah...she's got her own hill...she's got her own boat...)

Let me tell you - this place has like the best tourist logo ever.

What better way to say, "Hey - come to Dusseldorf!" than a giant texty smiley face. Which is a D. Get it? Dusseldorf? :D

City # 2

Roermand, Netherlands. Language = Dutch

After our morning stroll through smiley face land, we drove across the border to the Netherlands.

They have bikes. I'm serious. No, like a lot of bikes. Did you know that the Netherlands is the number one country of cyclists in the world? No, I'm not kidding. 99.1% of people here have a bike. Like there are 16,652,800 people in the Netherlands. And they have 16,500,000 bikes. That means even babies have bikes.

Here's the rathaus equivalent of Roermand. (The Dutch call it a Stadhuis.)

Here's the little church of Roermand.

Here's the little bridge of Roermand.

Here's the little cobblestone road of Roermand.

You get the picture...

City #3

Brussels, Belgium. Language = French

After spending a few hours in Roermand, we drove across another border into Belgium. Our final destination was Brussels. Here is the European Union Parliament Building.

So, yes...we've already been to Brussels, you say. We had to come back just for the food. Remember these fries? Remember this creepy fry guy who probably showed up in your nightmares?

We saw a new church. Well, it's actually old. It was just new to us. It's the church of St. Michael.

So we went to a comic book museum. Did you know that a lot of famous comic-strip-ers...comic-kazis....comicartists...(what's the term I'm looking for here..??) Well, people who draw comic strips. A lot of them are from Belgium.

Kieran is pretending he's Tintin. He could kind of use some more emotion...or something.

The Smurfs are a Belgian....thing.

There was a giant fez - probably the world's biggest - hanging from the ceiling at the museum.

It had cool Art Deco architecture.

Another place we visited in Belgium that we had not been to before was the Atomium.

WHAT is the Atomium, you ask?? Well, it's a giant replica of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

So, if you ever wondered what the inside of an iron crystal looked like inside, they have tiny escalators.

Here's the view from inside one of the tunnels.

There's even a disco escalator! Man, I'm glad they magnified this 165 billion times! It was really fun!

They even have an elevator! No way! Iron crystal atoms have everything! What could be better than this?

I know! Belgian chocolate!!! Nothing's better than that...

Wait! I stand corrected! The only thing better than Belgian Chocolate is...

The Belgian Chocolate Outlet Factory!!!!!!!

With all the free samples you can eat!!!! (Which you quickly learn, is not very many or you get a belly ache...but still...)

What's even better than that?????

Nothing. But here's Waterloo. In case you ever wanted to see where Napoleon got his butt kicked.

So, here's a giant hill called the Butte de Lion made by a bunch of people dumping buckets of dirt in a pile and putting a statue of a lion on top to commemorate the battle fought here.

So here's the game plan...the blue blue guys are the French and the red guys and the green guys and the dark green guys....oh just forget it. You know who wins...