Pat, Tasha and London..A family Visit!

Although I had a busy week and even went to a cooking class this week, I felt like I was just passing time and counting minutes until Friday when Pat, Natasha and granddaughter, London arrived!!

They made all their connections and London was a very good little girl on the long plane ride.  She only slept about 3 hours!   We spent Friday around the house and they all managed to stay up until around 6:30 and then crashed!   

The next morning after a bit of a sleep in, we all (except for Travis who stayed at Chris') jumped in the car and drove to Amsterdam.   It's normally about a 5 hour drive, but there was a lot of construction and in one place the autobahn was closed completely.  Mike and Pat decided to make their own "recalculations" and took us for a scenic drive through pear and apple orchards, past cute little houses with amazing gardens and of course past our first windmill sighting!

The orchards were very interesting.  All the apple and pear trees were "trained" into these very narrow, upright small trees that were very close together.  A great use of small spaces, I suppose.

We finally made our way into the big, bustling city of Amsterdam right about 5:00 p.m.  The first thing we noticed were the BIKES!!!   There were bikes everywhere!  People riding bikes, bikes parked along the roads, and even big bike parking garages.  It is truly a city of bikers.  

Amsterdam Central Train Station

Of course the next thing you notice is that all of the parcels of land are connected by a large, intricate water system....the canals.   They range from very small little "creeks" to large "rivers" in size.

Canal

 "coffee shops"

London...not in the mood for a picture.

We spent about an hour walking through the streets of Amsterdam, working our way to Ann Frank's house.   It's a city of canals, lined with houseboats, narrow streets, tall houses and restaurants.

London taking a picture of her mommy.

** Reminder: You can click on any picture to make it bigger!

This is Ann Frank's house.

My dinner of roasted chicken, applesauce, fried potatoes, purple cabbage and carrots.

London playing the "monkey game"

 After seeing the outside of the Ann Frank house, we started looking for a place for dinner.  We found a nice "authentic" Dutch restaurant that was really cute and we sat out on the enclosed porch.  


After dinner, we left Amsterdam and drove twenty minutes north to the little town of Voldendam, where our hotel was located.  


When we arrived the doors were locked and we asked a lady who was outside locking up the bikes if there was another entrance.  She said the hotel is closed.  It closed 15 minutes ago!!  What??  We have reservations!   So she told us to use the call box, which we did and finally after about ten minutes a very nice lady arrived and let us in so we could get our rooms.  I had no idea hotels closed at 8:00p.m.!!   

The hotel was really nice and fairly new. It was right on the bay and had a pretty marina. 

The next morning we walked around the marina and then got in the car and drove to the quaint little village of Edam.  It was SO CUTE.  We were looking for a bakery but it was Sunday morning and everything was closed.

I had heard of this outdoor Dutch Museum called Zaanse Schans.  It's located near the town of Zaandam.  It was raining really hard, but we decided to go take a look anyway.  

It was such an interesting place!   They have a big indoor museum about the area and then a large outdoor "village" with working windmills, a cheese factory and shop, a wooden shoe workshop with demonstrations, a bakery museum, a tin shop and more.  The rain stopped and we spent several hours exploring. 

I think the guys liked the windmills the best.  We went in one and because the wind was really blowing, we actually got to see the mill grinding up chalk.  It's the chalk that artists use for pastels.  It was about 5 stories tall and Mike, Pat and London went up to all five stories!!  There was a note on our tickets that said "visit this windmill at your own risk"  and it was pretty old and rickety.




We ate ate lunch at a little pancake house and then got in the car and drove back home. It was a great trip and we had a really fun couple of days.  
We love and miss you all!
-corri