We were excited when we got to Amsterdam. It seemed like another world even though the flight was very short - about an hour and a half. I saw these windmills in the water from the airplane. When we got closer I saw this. Flat... and very neat and clean.
We stayed in a beautiful old house that was a bed and breakfast with only four units called "
Fusion Suites". The rooms are gorgeous and I highly recommend staying there. The owners are Sharmila and Alex and they are friendly, attentive and the breakfast is awesome! This is what our room looked like.
My goodness, the bathroom! If you had been there you would have loved it too.
I took pictures from our bedroom window at all times of the day. Here are two of my favorites. Daytime.
Evening.
As soon as we got there, since it was around 5 PM, we went out and started walking. In fact we only walked in Amsterdam, and only took a taxi to and from the airport.
Here are some things we saw in the five days we were there. Click on them to get a bigger view. You can read the caption on the top of the pop up photo.
You can go to my
flickr if you want more, and there is more, 98 photos in all.
I got a bunny fold out card!
I didn't buy a lot in Amsterdam but there were so many shops. My husband was pretty patient when I did go in to look. This is where I bought my postcards and I sent out about 15. On the day before we left I walked about a mile to the post office and mailed them, got a box to ship some things home and walked back to our hotel. I packed the box and then lugged it back to the post office. It was fun because I got to window shop and take pictures of the interesting things on my way. One of the great things about this trip is the lack of house chores so there is plenty of time to just hang out together and find a good place to eat. We even watched TV and got the biggest kick out of the dutch channels where we listened to the lilting speech and strange accents we aren't used to.
A really fun restaurant we went to was called "Bollywood" and while we ate the best Indian food we watched music videos made in India. The food was so good we went back again and the waiter remembered us.
One day we trekked off to the Van Gogh Museum, about a half mile away. You can't take pictures there or else I would have at least 20 to show you. I did go to the museum shop and bought some postcards and a magnet though so I took some pictures of those. I think Van Gogh was amazing! There were so many paintings there that I had never seen before.
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"Fishing boats on the beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer"
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"The bedroom"
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"Still life with quinces and lemons" This painting has the only surviving frame that Van Gogh also painted, which he liked to do.
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"Wheat field with crows" My personal favorite now.
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"Small pear tree in blossom"
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Of course we kept walking.
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It turned out that the day we wanted to go on to Paris was the Queen of the Netherlands' birthday. It is a national holiday and all the trains are busy bringing people INTO the city where it is just a huge party all day. So after walking about 3 miles to the train station to find out we were kind of stranded and three miles back, AND a nap sitting up in the train station waiting for our number to be called, we made airline reservations and were relieved to not have to miss anything in Paris.
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THIS PHOTO IS FOR MY BANANA BUDDIES! I saw this in a shop window.
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and I bought this for my 13 year old son - a calculator that looks and smells like chocolate!!!
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For myself I bought these two issues of a lifestyle magazine because I love the title. No, I can't read Dutch but the pictures inside are gorgeous.
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Finally, I wanted to say that I got together a journal before I left home to record my trip. I had been sticking things in there every day and one day in Amsterdam, when I was tired of walking and my husband had gone off to do yoga, I just stayed in and cut up a magazine and made the beginnings of some cool pages I will continue to embellish later. Ta da!
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You have to rest, even when you've got to make the most of your time and you may not get back here again. You never know though...
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