Adventures in western Europe - Netherlands

Dylan's parents - Kenny and Linda - are here to visit for a week and we are having a blast and taking in lots of sights while doing some road trips. They arrived last Monday and we celebrated St. Paddy's Day in some pubs around the city. We checked out 2 Irish pubs and drank some Guiness, although the Irish pubs were both blasting dance music - so we didn't last too long. We went to the "coffin bar" which is located close to the city square and drank our beer out of skulls and our table was a casket - how fitting for my family! St. Paddy's day was very low key compared to my experiences in Halifax - that's for sure!

On Tuesday morning we headed towards the Netherlands to visit Amsterdam and the surrounding areas. Netherlands by car was an interesting excursion! Previously I had only been there by train so was nice to drive along the outskirts and see the farms and fields on the outskirts. We stayed in a cozy apartment close to Dam Square and went to see the sights. The weather was off and on raining all day but we toughed it out and walked around all evening. We visited the red light and the coffeshops - the most famous sights in Amsterdam. Later in the evening we went to the jenever bar called Wynand Fockink (introduced to me by Alison on my last adventure to Amsterdam) - jenever is a type of gin made in Holland. There are 'rules' to drinking jenever. The bartender fills the glass (shot glass on a stem - see pic) up to the very top almost overflowing and before you pick it up you have to bend down and sip the top of it off the bar . It is very strong, but tasty as you can pick from a long list of flavors. We topped the evening off with supper at a pizzeria and headed back to our 'apt' for the night. The next morning we checked out the flower market and walked the canals. While we were eating breakfast, we got our first glimpse of snow this winter - I was surprised to see it, but little did I know how much snow was to come in the next week.

We left and drove to check out the many tulip fields in Holland. We saw some scattered tulips, but most of the fields were covered in daffodils for easter. The colors and flat fields were beatiful - and easy to see what it would look like in about a week's time when it would be in full bloom! There is a yearly tulip festival called the Keukenhoff Tulip Festival near Lisse, Netherlands where and many people come to check out the bulbfields. The pictures of the tulip fields are not what we saw - they are what we would have seen in a week's time!

Wednesday night on the way home we stopped in Den Haag (The Hague) for supper. We walked along the windy freezing beach (see the waves in the pic) and stopped in lots of places until we finally found somewhere good to eat. At one of the places we stopped to check out, we sat down for a minute before deciding that it didn't look good, and left. I walked up the road and all of a sudden realized and screamed "I left my purse there"! Can you beleive it? How stunned am I? After what I went through last week in Greece, this was one of my dumbest moments. It was there waiting for me, but since then, I've gotten abused and hounded with reminders making sure my purse is always by my side!