Amsterdam

Folks, Amsterdam is awesome.  So so great.  We're leaving tomorrow and are very sad about it.  Good thing that we're heading to Paris.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Back to the beginning.

What wasn't awesome was getting here.  We knew the train ride was going to be our longest - just about 6 hours.  Ok, no biggie.  Then we got on the train and learned there would be no wifi.  Ok, we had books, and I had work to do. 

Look Ma!  No Wifi!

Then, about four hours into our ride, the train stopped at a scheduled stop and then basically chugged along at about 5MPH until it couldn't get going again.  The shortest version is that something happened to the locomotive, they tried to fix it (which necessitated turning off the AC and toilets for a while) couldn't fix it, and ended up having to tow us back to our last station and having another locomotive hook up to bring us the rest of the way to Amsterdam.  So our 6 hour ride turned into a 9.5 hour ride, and our travel day ended up being about 12 hours door to door.  It wasn't awesome.

This was our view for 3 hours.  From a 90 degree train compartment.

BUT all things considered it wasn't that big of a deal.  The kids were great, and we made friends with the very nice Iraqi man in our compartment who was visiting Amsterdam from Dubai.  A minor hiccup.

By the end the kids were entertaining themselves with staring contests.  I'm just glad they didn't kill each other.

We put our stuff down and went to dinner at a place in our neighborhood...where we were repeatedly annoyed by a local "gem" (according to the waitstaff).  The kids were quite disconcerted.  We ended our dinner inside, and swore it would be better after a good night sleep.

So we had a good night sleep in our kind-of-oddly-set-up Airbnb, and then head out for our first Amsterdam day.

The "master bedroom" is the canopied bed over on the left.  There's a little sitting area right outside the door.

In the loft upstairs are two twin beds and a bathroom with no door.  Fun!

We started at the Anne Frank house.  It's an incredibly popular Amsterdam attraction, so we had gotten our tickets well before our arrival.  We were able to wind our way through the house where she, her family, and another family were hidden from 1942-1944.  Despite the limited number of tickets for each time slot, it was very crowded.  Still, it was a really moving experience. Unfortunately we weren't able to take pictures. 

After that intense experience, we were glad to be able to lighten things up a little bit.  Right next door there's a branch of Pancakes Amsterdam, so we had traditional Dutch pancakes for lunch.  I went savory, everyone else went sweet, and they were all delicious.

Apple crumble pancake

Chocolate pancake

Oh yes, the apple crumble came with ice cream too.

Spinach, pine nut, bacon and goat cheese.  I ate every bite.

Following that we hopped on a canal cruise for an hour.  We went with a smaller open air boat, and the weather for it was absolutely perfect.  We learned some interesting things about the city and saw it from a really cool vantage point.

Houseboat

Houseboat available on Airbnb.  Apparently for $450/night.

We then walked over to Waterlooplein, which is basically a flea market.  We saw a bunch of stuff, and purchased none of it.

Kiss the ring.

Sadly for Lea, none of us wanted to schlepp a pair of new Doc Martins across the Atlantic.

What is happening here?

Crossing one of the many canals on the walk home.

A little break was followed by dinner at a local ramen place and a walk down to Dam Square.  We took a few pictures and saw the world's worst street performer.  (We didn't stay long).

He was not funny.  At all.

The next day was the BEST day.  When we decided to come to Amsterdam, I knew I wanted to see windmills.  We looked around for the best tour and ultimately decided to go with That Dam Guide, which offered small (8 person max) tours that were a little more off the beaten path than the regular windmill bus tours.  It was absolutely worth it.

We met up with our tour guide, Mike, at 9am, and he took us a whole bunch of places.  We started in the little town of Monnickendam, where we walked through the quiet streets and saw them setting up for a small Friday town festival.  We stopped at an old orphanage (like 1600s old) that has been turned into an adult day care facility.  One of the things that they do there is make apple pie.  So we had some real Dutch apple pie.  I meant to take a picture but I ate it before I remembered.  It was absolutely delicious.

Bell tower in Monnickendam

Small memorial to Monnickendam Jews killed by the Nazis

Little town in the background

Stumbling stones.  Apparently there are about 70,000 of these markers across Europe.  Each commemorates the last known place where Jews lived before being deported to concentration camps.

From Monnickendam we went to a local farm where they raise dairy cows, as well as tulip bulbs and potatoes.  We pet some calves (!!!) and met the family dog, Bruce (a girl, but named after Bruce Springsteen).  The farm has an automated milking process, where the cows actually hook themselves up to a robotic milking machine.  We got to see the process in action and it was pretty amazing.

She's in my suitcase.

Jax and Bruce loved each other.

The milk from the farm goes to the Beemster cheese collective, so it seemed only reasonable to go get and try some cheese.  So that's what we did.  Delicious.

We only bought two of the wheels.  Otherwise it felt excessive.

And then off to the windmill!  We got to go to and into a 400 year old functioning windmill.  The technology is actually amazing, both in terms of how the windmills themselves work, and how much changing of the land the Dutch were able to do because of windmills.  The Dutch have moved _a lot_ of water over the years.

The shoes were a little big.

The tour was interesting, we got to see a variety of cool stuff, none of the car rides were too long, etc.  If you're going to Amsterdam I recommend this tour 1000%.

Our traditional Dutch day was capped off with a traditional Dutch dinner at a restaurant called The Pantry.  Everyone ate very well.  All in all, it was a really great day. 

Basically Dutch shepherd's pie.

Beef stew, mashed potatoes, cabbage.  0% of that cabbage got eaten by either child.

Today was really fun as well.  The Rijksmuseum has what it bills as an escape room, but is basically a puzzle solving game that takes you all through the museum.  Both kids like escape rooms, and we lucked out and got some of the last remaining tickets for this morning.  It was a super cool experience, even though parts of it we actually hard.  We did crack the codes though, and made it to the end (sorry, we're now part of a secret society and have been sworn to secrecy about what exactly what we found out).

Getting our clues via text.

We figured out how to get the next one!

At our secret initiation.

Much to the kids chagrin, I did actually want to see some of the museum when we were finished, so we went back through some parts.  We ended up spending the whole morning at the museum, which had a really amazing collection of art.

The last thing on our list of things we really wanted to do in Amsterdam was the Resistance Museum.  So after a little rest we made it over there.  Given the fascist tendencies of the current US government, I found it very inspiring.

Who suspects a mother pushing a baby to have a gun and a grenade?  Moms rule.

"Hides the expelled and does not report the wanderer."  Probably the most badass cross stitch ever.

Our final dinner here was on the recommendation from our tour guide yesterday.  He swore that De Klos Cafe had really good ribs.  Hmmmm, not what one would expect from Amsterdam.  He also said that the wait time could be really long.  But since it was right on our street, we found some back up ideas and decided to give it a shot. 

We got there and were informed that it would be 2.5 hours for a table (I supposed that's what happens when your restaurant literally has 3 tables).  Um, no.  However, it would only be 25 minutes for a seat at the bar, and we could wait at the other bar directly across the street.  That we could do.  A few minutes later we were summoned, and dinner was really delicious.  Not as good as BBQ, but very good nonetheless.

Dinner at the bar.

The remnants of my and Jax's dinner

And that's it!  Amsterdam was really awesome.  Clean, friendly, a manageable size, etc.  Food here is definitely pricey, and the public transportation system not what it is in the other cities we've been to.  I would absolutely come back.

Tomorrow we head to Paris, our last stop on the trip.  We're excited to see Paris, and are also getting excited about heading home.  More to come!