In the beginning of August we took our now annual trip to Storyland in New Hampshire. We are joined by our next door neighbors and some friends of theirs (who went together before us joining, so we’re really the party crashers here but we got invited back again this year). This trip was also within a few days of me getting my new 85mm lens. I took a lot of pictures, with my 85mm the first day and my 35mm the second. We drove up on Friday afternoon, stopped at a Panera and grabbed some food at a grocery store along 93 in New Hampshire. There isn’t much in New Hampshire most of the drive so we end up stopping early. Celia slept almost the whole way which was good for the ride, but bad for her sleeping at night. We got to storyland right about 3pm after checking into the hotel and the kids were off!

Josie had just gotten some new shoes which she was extremely excited about, and our time spent in line allowed me ample time to do a photographic study on them. When she stomps on them, they light up on the sides.

We rode the antique car ride first, Josie wanted to go with Ethan so Celia drove our car for us and she was tickled pink.

We enjoyed some ice cream treats, rode on some more of the smaller rides and checked things out. Josie was feeling cautious and didn’t want to go on the roller coaster or other fast rides. They always do love to milk the cow.

We took it pretty easy and did the flying fish which Josie loved, but the time went fast with only three hours and we knew we’d be back the next day. We picked up takeout from a local restaurant, ate and headed to bed pretty early so the girls would have enough energy for the next full day!

This summer we rented another house in Falmouth. We took it easy, eating, playing in the pool, reading, playing on the beach and eating some more. We did make it to one playoff cape cod baseball league game. Otherwise we just took it easy, flew some kites. I took a lot of pictures, which I will now over-share! [If you put your mouse over the photos you can see the captions]

This last picture was from an early morning photo shoot when I took the girls out myself down first thing in the morning. Well first thing after we went to dunkin donuts and got egg wraps, munchkins and coffee. After getting donuts three times on this trip Celia now recognizes and shouts out ‘donuts’ every time we drive by a dunkin donuts. Actually now she randomly shouts out at other times too, also shouts ‘nutella!’

We had very early morning flights so again we booked car service to pick us up with a van with car seats and take us from our apartment to the airport. We had packed most everything up the night before so we just had to quickly tuck in a few last minute items (oops forgot Jordi’s shaver! but they sent it to us later). We put the girls to bed in their clothes and so after we had loaded up the van we just picked them up and tucked them right into the car and drove away. We had hoped they would sleep, but of course they didn’t. The quick flight to London was easy, but they took our stroller and would not return it. We lucked out that the walk in Heathrow wasn’t crazy like it was on the way to Paris, Josie made it through without being too exhausted. We killed a few hours eating and eating some more around the airport before they finally gave us our gate information and we headed for home. I can barely even remember the flight back to Boston which means it can’t have been too bad. We did some sleeping. More eating and playing with toys. Our girls were getting to be quite the world travelers!

We got home exhausted and Celia tried to get up at 1am local time (7am Amsterdam time) so that was a rough few days but we got back on schedule and made so many wonderful memories and had such a great time learning and exploring together.

And here are a few more photos that just never seemed to fit in somewhere…

Sunday morning, our last day in Amsterdam and even the city was sad that we had to leave. It was raining. We made our way into the city to check out the mansion tour of one of the old mansions that lined the canals to see how the rich lived back in the day. On the way we hung out at the classic Amsterdam coffee shop, Starbucks. It was a good place to get dry, warm and use the toilet. After a warm hot chocolate we went to the museum and explored the many rooms. It was a very vertical house as they all are, lots of stairs and the taller ceilings made the stairs even higher! Typical rich mansion though, servants and kitchen downstairs, entertaining rooms in the middle including those for women and men. The garden was lovely and closer to a french style than a lot of the others we’ve seen.

After the museum thankfully it had stopped raining, we went back to Leidseplein, the main square and stopped at one of the pancake houses for more pancakes for lunch! Yummy yummy. Oddly enough on this trip through the square there were these huge yellow structures that took me a few minutes to figure out what they were. They were temporary public urinals. We had seen many throughout Amsterdam that were fixed, but this was a first portable ones. Had to keep the kids from touching too, yuck! And while I support their efforts to keep the intoxicated crowd aiming in the right direction, they have all these public urinals for men, but what about women?  Apparently we’re just out of luck, no public bathrooms for us.

After lunch we got home and Celia and Josie took a nap after being exhausted from the long trip the day before and so many busy days. Josie hardly ever naps anymore and hadn’t since the first day of the trip. Once Celia woke up I took her out for a walk around the neighborhood. She had just recently discovered her pockets and liked to pick up small rocks and stow them away for later much to the chagrin of my washing machines.

This set of photos also shows a unique part of Amsterdam living, the green bins behind her in the picture below are the trash barrels. There are laws about workers not having to pick up things that are too heavy so they have these special chutes that go under the street and trucks come around to empty them so no one has to pick up the trash. Took us a bit to figure out where our trash was supposed to go and what those wierd mailbox like boxes were out in the street!

We went around the block and discovered a playground too where local kids were ever so kind with Celia and sharing their toys. It’s amazing how well they can all communicate given the language barrier and Celia’s few words at that time too!

After our playtime, we went back home and packed up some for our trip home. We then headed to Vondelpark where we heard there was a restaurant next to a playground so everyone could be happy together. We found it and after a small mis-ordering of a salad that came covered in fish (“That’s how all these salads are here!”) we got some dinner and the girls did more digging in the sand and climbing before we headed back to our apartment for our early morning flights.

One thing we specifically did not do while in Amsterdam that most people would do is the Anne Frank house and all that kind of tourism activity. We decided not to open up that discussion with Josie as she’s old enough to notice what’s going on, but too young for me to want to explain the horrors of war. We also missed the big museum as we didn’t think it would interest the kids too much. All in all though we were quite satisfied in seeing our top sights that we wanted to see and combining it with our childrens attention spans.

Saturday morning in Amsterdam we tried to get up and out relatively early to make a side day trip to Keukenhof! We took the tram to the central train station, a train and then bus to get out there. Took almost two hours by the time we were done although we had to wait for some connections and buy tickets and such. Here’s a video of Josie in the train station, discussing our favorite subject food, while we were waiting.

Then another video on the bus, where Celia was seeing cows out the window and demonstrating their sound! The iPad was good for some self-entertainment like this at least!

Once we finally got to Keukenhof and used the facilities as is always needed, we headed in to have lunch at the little cafe!

They had some tables right around a little pond with some ducks. Good time for cuddles and silliness!

So at this point if you didn’t look it up, you might be wondering what is Keukenhof? Well it’s a gigantic garden that is only open for about two months in the spring. While the flowers are the main attraction, they also have the quintessential dutch elements of dutch food, wooden shoes and windmills, some playgrounds and a petting zoo. With all these attractions, which we spent the whole day there looking at and enjoying, we took a ton of pictures. Here’s a few samples.

For some reason this was another place that attracted random tourists to take pictures of my children. One guy literally got in front of me to take the picture. So let me know if you see someone elses picture of my kids around the internet somewhere.

Walking around the place has tons of birds, so my jacket and the stroller got pooped on twice! Thankfully it cleaned up easily and quickly. After seeing a bunch of flowers and taking some pictures we went to the petting zoo.

Celia was too scared to pet the cow, and almost too scared to pet the goat but you can see her sneak attack from behind the tree here.

Josie on the other hand was enamored with the chickens and wanting to pet one. Other kids were much more aggressive and scaring them off. She finally waited and got her turn too as seen here.

After the animals we found the playground which was full of high climbing spots, big slides, a wooden house and a zip line!

We brought plastic cups and spoons with us everywhere for the girls to dig with since we didn’t have any sand toys. They weren’t the best substitutes but it was decidedly better than nothing and if they broke we just took out more.

Then we decided to do some more ‘adult’ activities like looking at the flowers and windmill and such which was met with great protest. They were a bit tired in the early afternoon. But we prevailed, took some more pictures and saw more sights.

We soldiered on to the windmill and found a stroppwaffel store that makes them fresh right there! They had their own specialized waffle iron that made the super thin waffles and slathered the caramel filling in themselves. We bought ourselves two and enjoyed them greatly although they actually weren’t that different from the grocery store ones we had previously bought!

After that we listened to some folk music and then climbed up the windmill and walked ourselves out of the park and headed for home. It was a fun side day trip but definitely a bit overtiring for the little ones. On the way home Josie struck up a conversation with all the people around us on the train who were quite amused by her. We met some ex-pat’s and former Cubans too. Celia liked to eat snacks and look out the window for more cows. Can’t remember what we did for dinner at this point but it wasn’t anything amazing, probably more Indonesian takeout.

Friday morning we started off with a tiny snack at home for breakfast and then headed to a pancake house for the real good stuff to start our day. We went to a little place called Sara’s Pancake House which was recommended by the guide book, but as I look around at reviews it got slammed online. For most of our meal only one person was working the restaurant, cooking, taking orders and everything. She was brisk and a bit gruff but we got our food and it was very good. I’ve been trying to make these kinds of pancakes at home (they’re not the small puffy ones but more like crepes, but not quite crepes) if anyone’s got a good authentic recipe.

After breakfast we meandered our way over to the houseboat museum. Amsterdam has around 3000 houseboats, all of them attached up for electricity, some of them can move, some are stationary. They require huge maintenance costs but you are right in the middle of things for sure! We considered renting one and then decided that Celia might walk off the edge as we got in and out too easily and just didn’t need that kind of stress. On our way over, we spied this little boat though!

We then went into the houseboat museum, which is just a houseboat with some information, taking turns with Josie as Celia had fallen asleep. It was interesting to get a peek inside, but quick. It’s a small space, I’m not really sure of the appeal.

After the houseboat museum we tried to buy stamps for our many postcards. We could not find a post office to save our life so we went with our normal mode of helpless tourist, and just asked other people randomly on the street. We were told about stores up there and around the corner, but couldn’t find them, and every store we went into asking for stamps just said ‘no’ and looked at us like we were annoying for not buying something they sold.

After the houseboat we went back to centraal station and caught a bus out to NEMO, the kids science museum of Amsterdam. I think it was raining and so we have no pictures but the outside is interesting, it looks like a ship. And if you’re willing to walk up many flights of stairs it has an amazing roof deck that you can go to for free and see the city. We went inside and explored the place all over. Lots of things to touch and explore, although since it was a science museum it was a bit over Josie’s head and definitely over Celia’s. They enjoyed getting to touch things and move things around a lot. We also watched a short performance (in Dutch) that was one huge domino knockdown, except using lots of things other than dominoes. So that translated well even without any english. It was crazy busy though so we had to keep track of the girls as they whizzed around.

I think the favorite part was a pretend ball packing factory. It had stations with computers that gave a list of balls that needed to be sent down a chute in a particular order and it gave you a scale and size measuring devices. Balls just dropped down randomly for you to find the right one. Celia loved picking up the balls and shoving them in the chute, haphazardly. Josie sort got the idea sometimes, but mostly just liked moving them around and exploring too. Josie also worked with some other kids to raise an elevator by pushing a turnstyle around and around and around and around some more. The one big kid in the elevator with Josie and another boy had to do most of the work! It was all Josie could do to keep walking around in that circle sometimes. I think the museum is really well done and would be fantastic for kids more like 8-12, those who can read and start to understand some more of the science.

After the NEMO we went back to Leidseplein after walking to Centraal Station and grabbed a nice Thai dinner off the main square. The kids were doing really well at eating in restaurants at this point and trying new foods. After dinner we went back to the main square and while we were just looking around some guys set up a big square of rope and started a whole big breakdancing routine. With our hands firmly on our wallets, we watched some very talented guys do spins, dances and gymnastics to music. They were great and we gladly gave them some money at the end. After dinner though our days are pretty much over so with that great entertainment to end our day on, we went home and put the girls to bed.

Our apartment was near Vondel Park, quite on purpose, which is the largest green space in Amsterdam I believe. It is a beautiful place with multiple playgrounds, lovely lakes, some tulips and lots of cyclists, walkers, and children. We went first thing in the morning to give the girls some nice time to run around, explore and for me to take some pictures. It happened to be a holiday I believe and so a lot of locals were actually out at the park with their kids once we had been there a while. The first playground we came to had another fun big circular swing the girls liked as well as other swings that had seats for three across a straight bar. One thing I noticed about their play structures is that they accommodated different numbers of children well, from the see-saw that could fit 6 or more, or just work with two to the igloo’s of difference sizes and group swings.

I also loved how their play structures made it difficult to get to the higher parts of the structure. I think it frustrated Josie at times,  but it kept Celia safely closer to the ground. Although now a few months later I wonder what she would be able to climb and get in trouble currently. We played (with plastic cups and spoons we kept in the bag for such emergencies) in the sand and in the structures before we decided to walk on and see more of the park. They had glorious open spaces of greenery, bridges, flowers and water. I had non-cooperative children and only managed a few shots in the gorgeous locations. They were done before I even started sadly.

Notice how Jordi is wearing a fleece winter hat, and Josie and I don’t have our coats zipped? It really wasn’t THAT cold, maybe in the 50’s. Here I go chopping our feet off again in pictures.

Eventually I tricked the girls into sitting still by pointing out this cool tree stump, chair thing.

And finally I got nothing but glares when I tried to get them to sit on the bridge over the water. They stared at the dogs walking past and anything but to avoid looking at my camera while I had them nicely framed by the trees and such.

Speaking of trees, we asked random people walking around and they said we had to go to the playground that was IN the trees and so we followed the trail around to find it. It was this awesome climbing structure plus climbing ropes across multiple trees way up about 30 feet in the air. Once Josie figured out how to get up there she was thrilled and walked all the way to the end and back. I saw other parents up there in these enclosed spaces with their toddlers and kept me and my toddler firmly on the ground.

I took Celia instead into some dark areas to try to get a good silhouette.

We went home for lunch and nap. Then in the afternoon we decided to finish our walking tour from Central Station through Dam Square to Leidseplein. We really enjoy the Rick Steeves books for their detailed walking tours so we could start and stop as we pleased as well as learn something and notice the details on the trip.

One of the things you’ll notice in Amsterdam are the hooks at the top of all the buildings, these are so they can pull furniture and goods up to the top with a pulley instead of trying to bring it up narrow inside staircases. Taxes were levied on houses by how wide they were, so most of the houses were very narrow and tall, only the rich had wide houses.

On our way through the city we stopped at Dam Square. And I still have a teenager sense of humor as I had to keep myself from laughing every time I said to my family, dam square. There they had lots of people dressed up in silly, famous or scary costumes such as an angel, the easter bunny, darth vader and batman. Josie opted for the silver angel.

This walk represents the ‘parents time’ of the day, meaning the kids were along for the stroll and we just tried to enjoy ourselves and learn something as we went. We likely stopped for ice cream or french fries on the way, as the kids always wanted food. We went through main tourist areas and shopping as well as into the flower market where we tried to buy some bulbs to bring home, but apparently it was the wrong season for that. We bought some more fresh flowers for our apartment though which were gorgeous purple tulips.

From there, we’re not sure what we did but I’m sure it involved more eating.

Wednesday was our first full day in Amsterdam. First thing in the morning I headed out to try to find a bakery to get some food at, but the one right near us was closed so I walked down the road a little until I smelled something yummy and then followed my nose to a french bakery and picked up some yummy morning treats. After that we headed out to the Van Gogh museum at museumplein. When we got there we were pleasantly surprised to see the Iamsterdam sign that you see in the commercials. Other tourists were standing around in the way though making any particularly fantastic photographs untenable.

That’s Jordi, Josie and Celia in front of the letter ‘S’. We had a hot chocolate from a little shop and a snack while outside.

Before heading into the museum though we took advantage of a tip we got from our guidebook. We went to the gift shop and let Josie pick out three postcards with artwork on them. One of the one she picked was this one:

We didn’t want to interrupt her interpretation of art, so we just went with it, but really? Once I got Celia to fall asleep finally on my back, we went inside the museum (with our tickets already purchased) and got Josie a kids audio guide. So between the postcards and looking for the butterflies that signified that the audio guide had some info, Josie was pretty well engaged. We enjoyed looking around the museum and seeing the change in his work and hearing the stories of the troubled man. Celia woke up and that ended our trip around the museum pretty quickly. We headed down to the cafe for lunch and managed to find some tasty treats. I did manage to offend the chef apparently though by asking for plain pasta for the kids, they went and did something entirely different from what was offered rather than just supply some pasta without the tomato sauce! Understanding the view points of different cultures can be tough sometimes.

After lunch and the museum we headed back outside to the plaza and went to the small play area for kids. They had a cool climbing structure that was just a bunch of telephone poles stacked up on top of one another, culminating with a slide from the top down to the ground. Neither one of our kids could really climb up it, instead climbing up the slide and then sliding back down. I thought it was pretty cool, the other kids seemed to manage but it was still a good challenge. They also had a big circular swing that the girls loved.

After playing around for a while and Jordi having another snack we decided to get some genuine french fries on the street and walked ourselves over to Leidseplein, the main square of Amsterdam, following our guidebook along the way. We got some yummy waffles covered in chocolate, belgian style this time. Then further down the street we found a shop that sells pretty much only french fries. We got some, I made them pose for a picture before eating the mayonnaise covered joy and we enjoyed them next to the canals.

And now the problem with writing about our trip more than two months later, I don’t have vivid details anymore. I believe we then caught a tram back to our neighborhood and then got some Indonesian takeout for dinner which was yummy and highly recommended by our upstairs neighbor.