Snow bunny! 

This was on our way walking to kindergarten this morning! Ann-Marie is just so excited about the snow. Yesterday Jake and her made a snowman. 

Here's the band! They played the guitars, plus a mandolyn and harmonica. They were great to watch and really knew how to capture the audience. This was at the Irish pub, we go here occasionally for a night out. They have live music on the weekends. 

This is Jake and me after we got home from the Netherlands. We were both very tired but after riding all day with the kids bickering in the backseat, we thought we'd go out and have some fun! So Brandon babysat and we called our friend to meet up with us! 

Prost! Cheers! We're having a night out with a friend in Bamberg. We're at the IRISH PUB downtown. We've learned how to say, "2 beers please" in German, so we're all set. This is our friend from England...Jools! He lives and works in Bamberg.

Jools and Amy at Irish pub 

Here we are at the table at the Irish pub.  

Our trip to Holland

We left on Thanksgiving day and ate some turkey sandwiches at a roadside park on the way.

One thing we noticed when we entered the Netherlands was the very modern type of buildings we saw on the way. They seemed very 'hip' you might say. Of course that is only in the new sections of cities. EVERYone we encountered spoke English very well (but Dutch too of course) and were very helpful and nice to us.

We went to Delft and Amsterdam. We were all kind of sick of traveling mostly because of the weather, so we came home a day early. We didn't go to The Hague as planned. Hopefully we will have a chance to go back to the Netherlands some time.

We went to the Rijksmuseum and to Anne Frank's house. We took a canal boat cruise in Amsterdam and we did a lot of walking the city streets. We did NOT see the famous red light district (we didn't look for it) but we did see one of the Amsterdam famous brown cafe's as we were driving around.

Mainly, for meals we had cheeseburgers! There was a McDonalds near our hotel...and we stopped at a fast food type place in Amsterdam (almost 40 euro for lunch!). Brandon and Ann-Marie loved the mayonaise on the French Fries (a typical Dutch thing). In fact we even saw that they serve packets of mayonaise that they call fry sauce or something like that. But our first night there in Delft we ate at South American restaurant and tried their cuisine. We had some sandwiches and Dutch beer there. Me and Brandon had a Heineken (well, Brandon had a half of one and I finished his) and Jake had a Grolsch. Jake had some sort of sweet and sour chicken sandwich with carrots on it and I had a very spice HOT shrimp sandwich with green beans on it. Brandon had a curry chicken sandwich and Ann-Marie had a fried banana type thing.

Sadly, I did not buy any cheese from Holland... which I had planned to get a 'wheel' of cheese. We did walk around on our last day in Delft and saw the street markets, with foods and other things for sale. That is really a nice experience (when the weather permits!).

I hope you enjoy our photos and please let me know when you visit!

Nasty weather for traveling. It was snowing and icing on the roads in Germany on the way home....cold and pouring down rain almost the whole time were were there.  

On the way home. Everyone is exhausted. Even the gnome. 

A pretty canal view in Amsterdam. It quit raining for a little while at one point while we were walking. 

This was in Germany, very near the border of the Netherlands. Those windmills are HUGE. There is snow on the ground, this was on our way home. We saw some in Holland too but it was storming hard at the time and we couldn't take any photos. We only saw one of the old style windmills that you think of when you think of Holland. But then we didn't go out searching for them. 

This is just a street in Amsterdam with a view of the street signs, train and bicycles.  

Here is Jake with the GPS. This came in very handy in Amsterdam. When we parked the car, he 'marked' it on the map. Then we walked all over the place and took a canal boat cruise and walked more. So, when it came time to find the car and go home...he was able to find it on the portable GPS so we could get back to the car. 

Jake and Ann-Marie walking. We just bought the umbrellas. Ann-Marie didn't get one. I guess she is looking down at the street for her own umbrella. It will make sense when you read the rest of the story! 

Wow! It stopped raining for a little while. The kids pose in front of one of the canals in Amsterdam.  

Close up...sharing the umbrella for a bit. 

We really got stuck in a bad rain. We took a canal boat cruise to get from the Anne Frank house to the Rijksmuseum and to see the city from the canals. Here is Ann-Marie looking out the window while on the canal cruise. 

We bought umbrellas at a stand. We only bought 3, figuring that Ann-Marie could share with us...you know, just walk close by. But it didn't really work very well because the umbrellas were small anyway. So she ended up pretty wet. Anyway, all of a sudden we realized she was doing this while walking everywhere we went. I asked her, "what are you doing?" and she told us this was her umbrella. She walked around like this all day! 

I felt sorry for her so I traded umbrellas. 

We walked the streets of Amsterdam quite a lot that day. Especially from the parking garage to the Anne Frank house. Notice Ann-Marie's stick umbrella? She really did use that all day. She wouldn't stay under our umbrellas at all! 

Here's the kids in front of the Rijksmuseum. The museum has a very nice collection of artwork, particularly those by Dutch artists, such as Rembrant, Vermeer and others. There is a separate Van Gogh museum but we didn't go to it.  

Here is Brandon looking at some artwork at the Rijksmuseum. I only took this one photo at the museum. I couldn't figure out how to turn the flash off, which is mandatory for taking photos inside the museum. 

Brandon in Amsterdam across the street from the Anne Frank house. We just finished the tour and the rains had let up enough to get the camera out. 

We are standing near the canal and the houses (see the glassed in area?) ...that is where you enter the Anne Frank house to pay. We didn't have to stand in line very long. 

A day in Amsterdam

A typical street with houses in Amsterdam. We drove around in Amsterdam for a very long time and found a huge pay parking lot. Driving was trecherous because of all the canals, cars and bicycles everywhere....even in the pouring rain.

The Anne Frank house was difficult to find, we only saw one small sign for it. The first floor has been made into an area where you buy your tickets (kids under 18 are free) , use the WC and look at a small scale model of the house. Then you walk into the house. You even go through the famous bookcase stairway. (The bookcase hid the fact that there were stairs there at all). You cannot take photos. You walk through room by room. Her posters of movie stars were on the walls of her room still and you can see the pencil markings on the wall measuring the children's height. It was a good experience to see but you definately 'feel' it when you are there. "It" being the feeling of history and sadness. As I walked through the rooms I looked out the windows (which were blackened out during their stay there) and had a black sheer sort of covering over them when we were there. I looked out and imagined not being able to see out or go out if I wanted to. I'm not sure I am making sense but...just the feeling of wanting 'out'. It was very sad.

At the end of the house tour there is a museum bookstore type place with Anne Frank's diary in MANY different languages, postcards, etc and a small cafe.

I think these two were wrestling until they saw me with the camera and then they decided to pose all sweet like they are snuggling.