Look who lost his front tooth the night before! It was so loose and he finally worked it loose right before bed Thursday night. So I had to take a picture of the cute toothless boy :)
Anne Frank house from the street.
We enjoyed looking through the house and museum. It is always a bit difficult to explain all of this to our kids, and I'm pretty sure the younger two still don't understand at all. But hopefully one day when they're studying WWII and European history in school all the sites we've seen will make some sense.
Here are a few more shots of Amsterdam.
There were more bikes than cars in the city. This is one of the smaller bike parking lots we saw. I didn't get a picture of the multi-level bike parking deck. The bike trails were also amazing all over the Netherlands. Next time we'll have to do a less touristy trip and spend some time biking through the countryside!
After Amsterdam in the morning, we headed about 9 miles north to Zaanse Schans.
The Zaanse Schans is an open air exhibit and museum of Dutch life in the 17th and 18th centuries. The authentic houses, clog making demonstrations and working windmills are amazing. You can tour 3 of the windmills, this is inside of "De Kat" or the paint or dye windmill.
Above is the mill stone, grinding raw materials to make pigments for paint and below are the wooden gears that send power from the wind to the mill stone.
E and CJ standing on the outside platform of "The Cat" windmill.
Kevin and boys relaxing at the foot of another windmill.
Piper and windmills.
More windmills...
CJ with windmills.
All three!
Here's the whole series of boys pictures to get the one good picture - Kevin was making them laugh pretty hard.
Another picture of the toothless boy.
They also had these Dutch children's games and activities area. The boys were trying hard to use these stilts. I was busy keeping track of Piper and when I turned around, here were these sweet women trying to help E learn to do the stilts! It was so adorable.
...and he actually sort of got the hang of it!
Not to be outdone, CJ had to try as well and these young girls were more than happy to try and help him. Unfortunately, he never really got the hang of it... but possibly because they never tired of helping him (and their friend was loving taking pics of them w/him) and he never really got the chance to try without them right there to help him out! It was truly cute and sweet.
Special thanks to Evelien, my Dutch friend who recommended we go to the Zaanse Schans, it was a great stop!
Next stop... Haarlem...
3 comments:
Again, so much fun!
Arras was our "hometown", so only a must see for those who miss it. :)
It does have a beautiful town square and you can go up in the belfry tower of the Hotel d'Ville, but since you've seen Brugge, it would be ho'hum I am afraid.
Vera
Wow the boys are growing up so fast! Looks like all you guys do is vacation . . . .
Phil.
Yes, Phil, it would seem that's all we do! To justify a little - I just don't get around to taking pictures except when we travel, and that's what I end up posting. However, I must concede that we do travel a lot here... so much to see and so little time!!
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