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Amsterdam


Sitting at the train station, and I must say we had a wonderful 2 days in Amsterdam! We arrived in the morning on Thursday, dropped our bags off at the hotel and hopped on a bus to Amsterdam central. We started with one of the iconic Amsterdam things...the "Iamsterdam" sign. They have a few of these around Amsterdam, but this one stays put (from what I understand). 


Then we walked over to the Van Gogh museum, which for someone that proudly says I hate art museums in Europe...this was not so bad. I will never appreciate art like other, more cultured people, but thankfully Kevin handles it well and makes sure to point out at least the most important ones to me! The Van Gogh one was really amazing, just because I know more about his life than most other artists. 

I should back up here, Kevin and I were completely exhausted this first day. Our flight from Chicago to Amsterdam took about 7 hours, and we maybe slept 3 of those hours since we left about 6:30 our time (we weren't tired enough to sleep until the end). That added with walking (and pregnancy for me) means I was totally exhausted. That and as we are each pushing 30...we aren't quite as young and spry as we were when we did a similar Europe trip 3 years ago when we got married. 

Okay, enough there. The point is after the museum we were feeling like it was time to relax a little before our next museum. We absolutely love relaxing in a park while we are traveling (being from Nebraska, any place without chiggers is pretty amazing....I didn't grow up just being able to lay in the grass). So we relaxed a bit, and actually we both fell asleep outside for about an hour in the middle of the day. 

When we woke up, we visited yet another art museums the Rijksmuseum. This was another beautiful (sterotypical) European art museum. But again, it had a few more things to keep me entertained (lots of guns, diamonds, and old sailing ship models on display along with the artwork). 

After that we walked around a bit and found a beautiful cafe to eat at for lunch. Kevin enjoyed a pancake, which Amsterdam is highly known for. These are more like giant open faced crepes, but still delicious.  We window shopped a little down the popular markets, walked around admiring the canals, went by the flower market and called it a day. 

We weent to bed early that night, and I slept a record breaking (like literally the longest I've slept ever) 14.5 hours that night. Which if you know how little I sleep on a regular basis, this is truly life altering. I blame pregnancy :) 

The next day we hit up the Anne Frank house were we had reserved time tickets. Then explored more of the heart of Amsterdam. This included walking around "Dam Square", Royal Palace, and the red light district. We window shopped some more, had pizza for lunch (Europeans are great at pizza...learning from their neighbors the Italians), and took a canal cruise around the city. We had delicious pasta for dinner, and made it back to the hotel in the not-too-late evening. 



And here we sit at the central train station ready to visit our next city....Brussels! 
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