Amsterdam

On Friday we went on a quick trip to the Netherlands. It's about a 5 hour drive from our house to Amsterdam. We decided this will probably be our last European trip while we live here, so we splurged on one night in the Marriott rather than our usual budget B&B accommodations. It was nice to be in a comfy room, but we had limited time to see the city, so I picked just a couple of things that I really wanted us to do there.

This says Amsterdam to me.

Bikes, canal, canal houses.

The number of bikes zooming around is really striking. And I barely avoided being struck by one more than once!

Our kiddos with a statue of Anne Frank.

We went to the Anne Frank House, which does not allow photos, but you can see the secret annex here and see some short video clips about the experience of being in hiding. (I highly recommend it.) I found this museum very moving. I am soooo glad we went. The concentration camps are horrific because of the scale of the atrocities that occurred there, but this place was more emotional for me because of the intimacy of the tragedy. I also found it difficult to answer Charlotte's questions, but she was much more interested in this place because girls lived there "just like her."

No trip to a European city would be complete for us without stopping to buy a hunk of cheese to take home. (PS. I don't want to hear anything about how enormous I look in this picture.)

Next we headed out for dinner at an Indonesian restaurant called Sama Sebo to celebrate Rob's birthday. We had (l to r) omelet, chicken, pork, rice, fried rice, and also (not pictured) sweet and sour fruits, and sweet potatoes. We had never had Indonesian food before and chose this because Indonesia was a Dutch colony for a long period of time, and it is a very popular cuisine in Amsterdam. It was alright. Not our favorite, but we did eat it all up. ;)

Finally, we spent the evening roaming around the Van Gogh Musuem (which also doesn't allow pictures.) I have seen pictures of his Sunflowers (above) for as long as I can remember. But I never knew that in real life the paint is so glossy that these flowers actually shine! Charlotte thought they were quite "sparklish." It was really a memorable and very full day for us. And our kids managed amazingly well considering how late we kept them up.