Saturday, December 22, 2007

Hoe is het weer?

Another day, another exciting experience in the Netherlands. The last few days the Berny's and I ventured up to Amsterdam via train to meet with Michelle, and then got to play tourist in Holland's biggest and most well know city.

We saw some important sites, mainly the Anne Frank Huis, and took a pretty sweet canal tour on a boat.


We also enjoyed the decadent parts of Amsterdam that everyone talks about. This included tasting and drinking lots of liquors at a place called Wynand Focking, with flavors like Aardbei (strawberry) Sinaasappel, (orange) and Appeltaart (apple pie). They were wonderful.





We also took a trip through the red light district, which, while very seedy, was not nearly as unsafe and dirty as one might imagine. We weren't able to take too many photos there, because in many parts they aren't allowed.
<-(this one isn't the red light districht, but the Rijksmuseum) The next morning we woke up to a wintry surprise. Well, maybe not so much a surprise, as we were freezing our back sides off the night before, but things sure looked a lot prettier the next morning.


We then took a train to Delft and stayed in a wonderful bed and breakfast about a 20 min walk out side of town. The landscape was the most amazingly winter-like that I have been in for years.

We walked around town, and found a closed Delft pottery factory so we decided to return to a different one the next day. On our way we played on a frozen lake, but only momentarily. The ice began to crack loudly. It sounded like an explosion under the ice. We vacated immediately.

From there we took a train back through Eindhoven and to Maastricht. On our way home there was a stunning sunset over a cool windmill. But that's more of a Holland thing, not a Limburg thing :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful place. Looks like you had a good visit. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Mamie said...

Hey Chris - it's Mamie... we're acting as Heather's elves this year for Christmas, but when she gave me your address there didn't seem to be a house/apartment # - can you email it to me at Mamiecaisse@gmail.com? Hopefully you get these comments emailed, but no worries if you don't see it in time - I will give Heather a call as soon as it is a more reasonable hour (and your Christmas gift will be on its way!)