Amsterdam Day 3

Day 3 was our last day in Amsterdam. I had booked us a country bike tour, as our flight did not leave until 6:30 pm. We woke up to dark, angry skies, some serious wind, and temps in the fifties. Not really what I was hoping for on our bike tour! To get to the meeting point we took our first tram ride in the city (my first streetcar ride ever, actually!). We had to share a piping hot waffle to warm up once we got there. :)


We all got fitted for our bikes and we hit the road. It felt really good- THIS is the way to get around Amsterdam! Our bikes were comfy and they were outfitted with bells, which Ted took the liberty of using as much as he could get away with.

Here's Ted enjoying the ride through Vondel Park!

At one point we had to stop and wait for a gate to close on a lock. Once these boats got inside the lock, they starting draining to water level. Ted is great at explaining how it works, but all I know is they have to use them to change from one water level to another when entering or leaving the canal system.


These boats are waiting inside the lock.

Next we rode to a houseboat community. It was quite interesting, and the homes were much more extensive than those parked along the canals!

Our guide told us that hippies started moving into houseboats, and at that time a mooring was very cheap. The hippies bought up barges and turned them into houseboats for very cheap. Now a mooring for your houseboat will cost you $250,000! In a point in the housing market when there wasn't a house around to rent or buy, "yuppies" bought up these houseboats from the hippies and fixed them up to their liking, and the hippies moved to a tropical country and lived life high on the hog. Of course some of the hippies stuck around (the guide pointed to the houses in the pic above).
Some, however, really got into the renovations- there are some really nice looking properties!



Next we stopped by the lake to feed the geese. I'm no stranger to feeding geese, but apparently some people are... Our guide was a little afraid, and as soon as the bread was gone she had us high-tail it outta there before they came after us. Oh, and look- the other blonde girl on the tour dressed like me (Ted calls those my Peg Bundy pants).


Our next stop on the tour was at the Olympic rowing lanes. A few people were heading out on the water....all I could think was BRRR! As far as sports go, the Dutch are good at rowing and speed-skating...really anything to do with flat, cold, and / or water!


Farther down the line we came upon an old windmill. A caretaker lives in the windmill for very little money, but they have to make sure the windmill turns a certain number of times per year (there is a meter inside the house). He also has to maintain the thatched roof. The big wheel moves the blades around the windmill to get the best position for catching the wind. The black strips on the blades are rolls of canvas that can be unfurled to get the blades rotating even faster.

Our guide took a group photo with everybody's cameras. I didn't really care about it- I don't know a single person's name in this group- but whatever, I went with it. I'm very glad the tour company we chose limits their group size, because we had a hard enough time getting through traffic as it was!

The next part of the tour was a favorite of mine. We rode through the polders (land that has been reclaimed from the sea) and the "farming" area. I use quotes because our guide told us these are very rich people that live in the country and do some farm-type things but they don't really farm much land at all. The picture below is called Such-and-Such Mansion (I forget the name) and I really think it is a beautiful home. The country homes aren't all that big (not what you would generally call a mansion, anyway) because it is a law that you cannot expand the foundations of the house, so there are no additions unless you build up. I think it is also worth noting that the house next door had a big extended cab Ford truck. Ted and I had a chuckle about that. Ranch Daddy. ;)



He we are in our bike lane heading into a very nice neighborhood. If it weren't in Europe, I'd live there. Aren't you impressed with my ability to snap photos from my moving bicycle?!

Our second to last stop was at Rembrandt Farm. I guess the farm can be seen in one of Rembrandt's paintings. At the farm they have a 30-cow dairy herd and make their own cheese.

I was quite happy to pet this girl's head. She liked it too.

Here's the milking parlor. The guide didn't really want to go in because she said it stinks, but there was a curious couple who asked to go anyway, so of course I tagged along. To be honest it smelled like barn and water- I'd love to see their faces when they got a whiff of just about any other dairy barn in the world. One of the gals said that a while back, after she saw how dirty milking parlors were, she quit drinking milk. I'm sure everyone knows what I think about that (shaking my head).

The next stop at the farm was to see how wooden shoes were made. Back in Pella we just call them wooden shoes, but here everyone was calling them clogs. Either way. They aren't worn so much anymore, but the people who do are usually farmers and construction workers. The shoes act like snowshoes on soggy ground (I imagine sogginess is quite common in these parts).


They have a special machine that carves the shoes out of poplar trees.

This machine hollows out the inside. Once that is done they hang the shoes from the ceiling to dry (they carve the shoes with new, wet wood so it doesn't break during the process).


These are Dutch wedding shoes, worn once in a lifetime and then hung in the house with flowers inside. Pretty!

We also got a little lesson on how cheese is made. I don't really remember it all, but it involves this:

this cheese press,


and this lovely wall of cheeses, aging away in their wax skins.

We tasted some free samples, bought a delicious smoked Gouda to take home, and ended our farm tour with a Heineken and one last visit with the girls.

This calf's a cutie, but his future is not so bright, if you know what I mean.

This girl had a hankering for Heineken.

We headed back to town, making one final stop at Queen Beatrix Park.

The park was given to Queen Beatrix as a gift on her first birthday. Our guide told us a few interesting points of history, and we hit the road back to the museumplein. From there we took the train to the airport and headed back to Nurnberg. We were able to enjoy a warm and sunny Memorial Day at home. All in all, a pretty good holiday weekend!

Amsterdam Day 2

You can read about our first day in Amsterdam here!

For Day Two of our trip, I had planned to see the Anne Frank house and tour the Heineken Brewery. We started off the morning with a complimentary breakfast at the hotel- salami and Gouda sandwiches. I like both salami and Gouda very much, but I still consider them a lunch food. Once we got to Centraal Station, we set off towards Prinsengracht.


More varieties of houseboats. Some of them look darn cozy!



A 3-seater..... I saw a man with a little boy in the front holder zooming by and the little boy was gripping the handlebars making motorcycle noises. It was pretty cute!



The office building where Anne Frank and her family hid in a secret annex for two years during WWII. We did not get a chance to go inside- the lines were really long, and they were sold out of the online tickets that would allow you to bypass the line. I had read The Diary of a Young Girl a couple weeks before coming to Amsterdam so I would know what it was about!

From Prinsengracht, we moved on to The Heineken Experience- a brewery tour (although they no longer use this brewery). Surprisingly, the entire tour was in English- from the signs on the walls to the interactive displays. We walked through the process of how beer is made and even had the opportunity to taste Step 1 - a mixture of hops and water! It tasted like horse feed and the flavor stayed in my mouth for far too long.



At the end of the tour we got to cash in our tokens for 2 beers each! They like to say you get "two free beers" but I'm pretty sure we paid for it in the ticket price. ;)

From the brewery we crossed the street and went to a pancake place for lunch. The Dutch love their pannekuchens! You could choose from sweet or salty pancakes- Ted got hot pancakes with ice cream on top (which may have changed his life) and I chose apple & bacon pancakes (not my best decision ever but it wasn't horrible).



What would a pancake lunch be without a steamy, buttery plate of poffertjes to share!?

By the time we finished up lunch and hauled our full bellies up to the train station, we were ready to get out of the city. Our train ran every 28 minutes, but I always had our paperback books in my backpack so we didn't really mind the wait (if anyone is looking for something new to read, pick up The Confession by John Grisham- I give it a thumbs up).

We got back to the hotel and had some nap / tv time, and by the time we got around to dinner it was almost 8! We walked down the street towards Hoopfdorf (a suburb of Amsterdam I guess) and it was more what I expected Holland to look like. Just a nice, quiet little town. It was raining so I didn't really get any pictures that show what I mean, but I'll put 'em up anyway.

One thing I noticed was that none of the yards had grass! They all had plants and shrubs and flowers, but the base was rock, and some were just solid rock like you would find on a playground. Interesting!


We grabbed some pizza, walked back to the hotel, chowed down, and called it a good night. :)

Day Three to follow.

Amsterdam Day 1

Friday morning Ted and I got on a plane headed for a weekend trip in Amsterdam!

Enjoying the DSM Register- Thanks Mom!

We made it to Holland around 2:15, and of course I had to book us in a hotel where the shuttle doesn't run all day- you have to call for them to come get you. We kinda sat around hoping someone else in the crowd was going there and already made the call- whether that happened or not, I don't really know, but we did finally get a shuttle.

Our room was very large by European standards, and the service was just fine, minus cold showers on Saturday morning. There were even some English-speaking shows on the television. We watched Salon Takeover while we rested our weary feet... ;) Speaking of speaking English, English was the most-overheard language in the city. Truly, the only time I heard someone speaking Dutch was the front-desk clerk at the hotel, when she was on the telephone. Even in crowds of people (which was almost the whole city), English seemed to be predominately spoken.

One very big minus about the hotel I chose was that it was not within reaches of the inter-city train system (which I did not realize at the time of booking). There really isn't a metro system- there are mostly street cars (trams) above-ground, which we assume is because of the sea level issue in The Netherlands. So we rode a train to town for about 20 minutes every day, which cost us 20 euro round-trip. Kinda pricey, and you can't really bop back to your hotel to take a rest and then head back into the city. Well, you could, but we didn't.

I didn't really have any plans for our first night other than to head into Amsterdam, find some food and wander around a bit. We got to Dam Square and one of the first things Ted saw:


I made a beeline straight over there! I'm used to the poffertjes at Tulip Time, and these were a different batter with LOADS more butter and sugar on top. Quite good! Honestly I can't say which is better. I guess these are authentic, though- that counts for something!



Ted enjoyed a delicious chocolate waffle- he really couldn't get enough of it!

We continued to wander around Central Amsterdam. Here's a few views of the city:


It might look like a nice, sunny day in this picture but let me assure you that it was very cold and windy. Any sun seen the first afternoon was definitely the last we saw on our weekend, and the weather progressively got worse. This canal scene looks quaint in the picture, but everywhere you go you smell marijauna drifting from coffee shops, wander past window displays of XXX content, and fight crowds of people and bicycles. Central Amsterdam was really not our favorite place to be.

We also wandered through the infamous Red Light District around dinner time. The sun doesn't set in Amsterdam until 10pm this time of year, so there was no red neon glow or anything like that, but some of the...ahem....ladies...were just opening up for business. Along the street in this district all the windows have long red drapes and at a certain time the curtains are pulled back and, well, the goods are put on display. They stand in the full-length windows like mannequins and advertise their business, often beckoning to people. No pictures allowed, and it said in my travel book that if you try snapping a photo the women in the windows will come outside and destroy your camera.

For dinner we ate some Turkish grill, went to a pub for a glass of beer, and decided to walk a little bit more before heading back to the train station.


This area was much more peaceful. There were no coffee shops (coffee shops sell pot, not coffee), no throngs of people, and only the occasional bicycle zipped past us. A welcome end to what felt like a frantic day in the city. Oh, a little about the houseboats along the canal- Yes, lots of people live in them. Yes, some are hooked up to electricity. No, most of them are not hooked up to sewer utilities. Yes, thankfully they flush the canals out once a week. No, that is probably not enough!

We finally made our way back to Centraal Station, and definitely thought this picture was worth noting:

No parking garage for cars, just bikes! So, so many bikes in this country. You're liable to lose a limb if you step into the bike path at the wrong time! Most of the bikes are on their last leg, and all are very old-fashioned. Nothing resembling a Huffy from Wal-Mart. Someone told us there are 1.5 bicycles for every person in Amsterdam. Oh, and the family bikes and bikes with boxes on the front like you might see in the parade at Tulip Time are still very much in use over here. Dutch people attach their children to their bikes in just about every conceivable way, and it was not uncommon to see a couple of kids cruising along in a wooden box attached to the front of the bike that mom or dad was pedaling! There was not a street around that didn't have a bike lane or specific bike path, and it truly seemed to be the best way to get around such a city.

This ends day one! More to follow.

3 Years

Well, folks, three years ago today Ted and I were waiting out the storm at Red Rock, hoping against hope that it might dry up just long enough to say "I do." And it did! We plan to celebrate our anniversary by going out for Chinese tonight. :)

I know I abruptly stopped blogging- the reason is because I am spending my all my creative juices tweaking my resume and cover letter every day.... Every job I apply for needs just a little different angle, and we all know my resume doesn't sound too impressive so I have to "wow" them with my cover letter! In case you didn't know, the job search (for both of us) has begun. If you have any hints or tips for job openings in the Marion County or Des Moines area, let us know!

I do have a few pics I can share with you. Then I have to go make my husband some Happy Anniversary pancakes for when he gets home from PT!

We got several days of bad weather last week- this storm snuck up on me while I was out walking. Luckily I wasn't too far out of town when the clouds rolled in!

Even though it was raining, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap a few quick shots on the way home.....






The next picture is kind of grisly. Ted and I walked out the door to go for a walk and accidentally crushed some snail shells- after the rain they came out in full force and we didn't expect them to be in piles on the sidewalk! When we came back, slugs had come out of the woodwork to munch on the dead snails. It was quite a scene. The next day Karl threw out some salt, and as you can imagine, that took care of the snail problem (although I didn't think it was too much of a problem).


Some days you walk out the door (or just open the windows) and it smells like "honey" outside. Here's why:


And, last but not least, here's a lovely rainbow to brighten up your day!


I'll post again soon. Just not as soon as you're used to hearing from me! Have a great day.