A Six Hour Walk

A six hour walk - A three hour tour - I suddenly have the Gilligan's Island theme song running through my mind...........

We walked and walked and walked today! We started off walking through the streets of the Jordaan. We went past the Anne Frank house and at 9am (when it opens), and the line to get in was already forming the whole way around the corner of the building!

The Jordaan district was absolutely beautiful! The streets were quiet and peaceful. It was sunny, low 70's with a light breeze. There were not many people out and about, as is the case on most Sunday mornings, but there were a number of boats sailing through the canals.

Jagger was enthralled with the duck family we saw - a momma duck with 8-10 little babies. A man on the balcony of an apartment threw some bread into the canal and we were able to watch them eat. When they were finished we were able to walk along the canal as they swam along beside us.

We looked at the different houses and picked out what we would like to buy if we had an extra E500,000.

We ended up waaay on the other side of Amsterdam on Nassau Kade. There was a cute little park there so Jagger played on the playground a bit. Grassy spaces are few here, so it was nice to find a little park (that wasn't full of dog crap!) with a bench to sit and enjoy the weather. We do plan to go to VondelPark later in the week.

Then we headed over toward Spui Square (pronounced "Spou" and rhymes with "cow"). We grabbed lunch at a little sandwhich shop called Broodjies and Kootjies. Jagger and I used the bathroom and saw that Mary Kate Olsen (or at least someone who writes graffiti on bathroom walls and wants to be her) had been there!

Next, we stopped in at the "Green Bakery". It's the Turkish bakery that I wrote about before. It's actually called "Turkish Bakerij", but since the sign was green, the kids gave it a name to distinguish it from the "Red Bakery" that had hand made stroopwaffles. The Turkish man had just opened the bakery right before we arrived last time. He is right across the street from where we stayed last time and we visited his store daily. When we walked in today he came out from behind the counter and shook Jeff's hand. We have a hard time talking with him because he speaks mostly Turkish and a little Dutch. He was happy to see us and asked about the other "kinderen" (kids). Jeff told him they were back in the US and he grabbed a package of chocolate cookies and threw them in the bag and said "Da Kinderen". (So Justice and Journey - we will bring you back the chocolate cookies from the bakery guy!)

I panicked when I didn't see any Turkish Baklava at the bakery! I came all the way from the US to get some! The guy's wife makes it and it so do delicious! It is made of crispy pieces of phyllo dough, pine nuts, and a sweet clear syrup. I asked him about it and he pulled out a little tray with the last 4 pieces. Of course he threw that in the bag for free too! He said something about having more on March 1st.....I didn't realize until we were out the door and down the street that he was saying "Mondaag First"....Mondaag means "monday" in Dutch and I think he thought "First" meant "more" or something. So I guess we'll have to walk all the way to the other side of town again tomorrow!

Our next stop was the Amsterdam Historich Museum. We went there in March, but Jeff wanted to go back again. We went through it pretty quickly last time (it's a pretty long museum) and he wanted to be able to actually read the history of the city and descriptions of the paintings. Jagger enjoyed it because there were lots of buttons to push and things to touch. He loves to look at maps and likes to look at replicas of the Queen's Palace. I was able to look at the parts dedicated to WWII, since we missed those last time when the kids were tired.

The Historich Museum used to be a building that housed the city's orphans. It is next door to a nunnery (still in use). When the plague and other diseases hit Amsterdam, many children were orphaned. The children in rich families went to live with relatives, but the poor children were sent to the orphanage. One of the most intersting pieces in the museum is a beautiful old wooden chest or trunk. They believed that the chest had some sort of miraculous power, as a number of different terminally ill children had sat on it and it had cured them. The chest was hidden in an attic for a number of years before it was brought to the museum.

After spending a couple of hours walking through the museum we went to the shopping area to look for a cord to connect my camera to the laptop so I can upload pictures. I was frustrated that I forgot it and wouldn't be able to include photos with the blog. And then I realized that I WILL run out of disk storage space if I can't upload photos! Unfortunately the computer store and the photo store neither one had a cord. But I did realize that I can stick my disk into one of their instant photo machines and have the photos printed on CD. That way I will be able to put them on the blog and have permanent copies of them! Now all I need to do is get my bottom back there to get some CD's made!

Our last stop was the bookstore (again!). I bought a book called "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom. The story takes place in Haarlem, the Netherlands and is the other side of the Anne Frank story. Corrie's family hid Jews in their home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The book chronicles the hardships and risks that the family endured during that time. We plan to go back to Haarlem in a few days to visit the Grote Kerk (Great Church) again, so maybe we will stop by the Corrie ten Boom house for a tour too!

Jagger fell asleep in his stroller after we were finished at the museum (around 2pm) and is still sleeping now at slightly after 6pm. So it looks like he will do the same thing as yesterday - sleep all afternoon, wake up in the evening to eat dinner and play and then go back to sleep again, only to wake in the wee hours of the morning!

Why am I awake at 6am?

Because my 3 year old isn't use to the time change! I guess I shouldn't complain - it's better than 5am, which was yesterday's wake up time!

We took a walk down Kaalverstraat last night - that is the major shopping street in the center of Amsterdam. The new Harry Potter book was released in Europe yesterday, so we went to Wordsworth and bought a copy (and we got a free copy of a book called "Lion Boy"). The people at the American Book store said that they ordered 2500 copies of the Harry Potter book and they were almost sold out at 6:30pm last night.

The weather has been beautiful so far! Sunny, warm, light breeze, in the mid 70s. Record breaking weather seems to follow us wherever we go on vacation, so this has been a nice change. It's nice to see the country when there are leaves on the trees and everything is green. But once again I will not get to see the tulip fields! We were here a little too early to see them bloom in March and now it is too late! It has been neat to see all of the outdoor cafe's though. They were just starting to put tables outside in March. Now that the weather is beautiful the sidewalks are cluttered with tables and chairs - so people can eat out in the sunshine and fresh air while watching the canal boats go by. You just gotta watch where you sit.....yesterday Jagger and I were going to meet Jeff and I sat down in a wicker chair outside of a resturant. Jagger was still in his stroller in front of me. A young dreadockled British girl came out and politely told me I would have to move, as this was a coffeeshop! OOPS! I guess they don't like 3 year olds to smell the "coffee"!

We're going to take a walk through the Jordaan (pronounced "Yor-dahn") today. It is an upperclass, yuppie type neighborhood in the western part of Amsterdam. If we were to move here, that is probably where we would want live. It is absolutely beautiful and we always enjoy our walks there. And then I'm going to try to find a computer or camera store where I can get a darn camera cord! Maybe we should find a toy store too.....I didn't bring much for Jagger to play with. I brought a bunch of his Magic School Bus books (his obsession right now) but I didn't bring any actual toys. I did buy him a plastic cup last night. I was going crazy watching him drink from these thin little glass glasses here- holding it with one hand, not pushing it back far enough on the table, drinking water from a glass at night while his head was bobbing cause he was still sleepy....so I found this little housewares discount store and grabbed this little round sippy cup - shaped like a football with a bear face on the front. I *thought* it was just a cute cup. But Jeff and I watched last night while Jagger played "Hide and Seek" with his new sippy cup! He would hide the sippy cup, then cover his eyes and count and then search for the cup. Then it was the cup's turn to count! It was really quite bizarre! Since the TV shows here are "not real" (Jagger's description of Nickelodeon cartoons in Dutch), the poor kid is bored! I'm hoping to find a toy store that has some neat little compact playsets that we can easily take back with us.

We're baaaaack!

Visiting Amsterdam again! This time it is just Jeff, Jagger and I. My mom was generous enough to come down from PA to stay with Justice and Journey. Of course we're both regretting that decision, just as I thought we would ;) Jeff asked me (on the plane on the way here), how old a child has to be to fly by themselves. I didn't understand why he was asking until later when he said we should have brought the other two guys! Nope, they're not gonna do a 6 hour flight by themselves!

Jagger is missing his brothers like crazy. Yes, they fight A LOT, but boy do they keep him entertained!

Jagger is convinced that we came to the "wrong Amsterdam"! I think he thought we were going to stay in the same house we were in last time. I tried to explain it to him, but he didn't get it. That was a big place for 5 people for 5 weeks! We will only be here for 10 days this time and there are only three of us. We rented an apartment through a hotel we stayed with the first time we came as a family. It's a nice place - overlooks a canal with a nice size living room, a small kitchen, and a big bedroom. The bathroom is rather large for European standards. We're on the top floor so we have a nice view of the canal and street and we also have windows in the ceiling. I would call them "skylights", but they are more like windows that you can open (with a long metal screw bar that you crank). Jagger was thrilled when a pigeon feather floated into the living room awhile ago!

When Jagger was tired last night he kept telling us that he wanted to go home to the "real world!" No, I don't think he wants to star in any MTV reality TV productions. The kid was just tired and missed his brothers and wanted to go home! He's also obsessed with Six Flags ever since we went to their Hurrican Harbor water park a few weeks ago. He's still talking about going back and now he wants to go to Six Flags Amsterdam! We're hoping to take a trip to Scheveningen, a beach resort along the North Sea sometime this week, so maybe that will satisfy him for awhile. I can't image what the water temp will be like though. This kid was swimming on the tropical beaches of Turks and Caicos a few months ago......

I realized awhile ago that I forgot to bring the cord that connects my digital camera to my computer, so I'll have to wait until we get home to upload pictures, darn it!!!