Castle Hoensbroek & Tongeren, Belgium

This is Castle Hoensbroek in the Netherlands. It is only about 30 minutes from our house but Saturday was the first time we had been there! I can't believe how close it was and we never went before. It is a very small castles compared to others that we have seen but the outside was really neat and it is a moated castle which you do not see very often. The inside was a little underwhelming, at least in my opinion, too touristy and more for kids, but it was still interesting to see and it had some information about the history of the castle and the area.



I thought that this was neat. It was in the courtyard of the castle and it has the directions (N,S,E,W) in the stone.



Luke and I at Castle Hoensbroek



Just me messing up people's pictures, I learned everything I know from Kyle! :-P



On Sunday we went to Tongeren, Belgium for their famous antiques market, it is one of the most popular in Europe and the second largest in Europe. We got there late and only really had about 2-3 hours to look around which was not even close to being enough time, most people show up at 7am and shop until 2pm. Well we did have some good finds. Above is our new kitchen hutch, we have been looking for one of these for nearly two years!!! This one isn't an antique...yet, it is only about 60 years old but it is in near perfect condition and beautiful, the picture doesn't do it justice. We were lucky that the guy gave us a really, really good price and then after we decided to take it he knocked another 25 Euro off the already awesome price. So this made my day! We also got a small antique bookcase that is dark oak and over 100 years old, it has some really unique, interesting carvings on the side which i really liked. There was a nice trunk there from 1880 that I may have to go back for in a few weeks :-)



I know this picture is the wrong way!! Eeek! But it shows the carvings on the sides of our bookshelf that I really like.

Well now the weekend is over and back to school, hopefully we will go some more interesting places next weekend if the weather stays nice. And Luke just got back from Toledo, Spain and I will put some pictures up from there soon.