Bonn & Amsterdam

Before we got to the Netherlands, we made a little detour to Bonn, Germany. Tash had me do some of the driving in Bonn, which was fun but slightly scary. Getting used to the gas/break pedal sensitivity levels, as well as the unfamiliar traffic layouts of Germany, was crazy but fun. 

Tash, Rachel and I are Pinterest users, and this street in Bonn comes up a lot when you type "Europe Travel" in Pinterest. Luckily for us it was on the way to our destination! I can't believe we happened to be traveling in that direction while this street was in full bloom! 

It was fun to look both up and down while walking on that street! 

I definitely love how much cobblestoning is done out here!

Amstah-dam!!! I'm sorry to say I don't feel like I got any drop dead amazing photos of this gorgeous city. But after having seen a few big cities on my travels, I can safely say Amsterdam lives up to it's picturesque awesomeness. I LOVED it! I wish we could've had one more day to walk around!

The architecture was amazing, the streets had an awesome feel to them, there were so many languages being spoken, and pretty much everyone spoke perfect English if we talked to them. 

Liz, if you are reading this, I'm sure you are not surprised that it was overcast lol! 

Sheesh, the weather gods are never with me. We never let it dampen our spirits though, 

We saw a flee market and immediately parked. I could've happily gone broke in this one shop, the stuff was so COOOOL. We bought some beautiful tiny paintings with detailed frames, as well as some pottery. Tash had her eye on a really intricate silver shield up on a wall here, but it was a bit too expensive for her liking. 

We saw the swords up to the right and thought of Jack.

Van Gogh is huge here, as is Vermeer. We'd planned on going to the Van Gogh Museum nearby, but we lost track of the time and couldn't make it. This shop at the flee market was cool though ha ha!

2 things here. #1: I'd spaced that Marijuana is most definitely legal here, and while I didn't smell any being smoked (luckily), we saw lots of it being sold in many forms, over on the left. #2: Mom, Tash and I had a bit of a laugh when we saw the guy hanging on the right ha ha ha. Are old Teletubbies a flee market staple in Europe? Sheesh ha ha

Found a flipping spinning wheel. They had EVERYTHING at this one teeny flee market!!

 

 Cool buildings everywhere!!!

Ok. The XXX symbol. When we'd first started walking around the city, we saw tons of red & black XXX flags, banners, and symbols everywhere. I didn't know much about Amsterdam, but our friend Rachel said that's the symbol for the red light district. We saw these symbols EVERYWHERE, but it was a bit confusing because the symbol kept popping up on things like clocks or the rug inside the freaking opera house (near where we parked). 

When we found some Wifi, we looked the symbol up and discovered that it also happens to be the Coat of Arms to a famous Amsterdam Saint. So I don't know the ratio of Coat-of-Arms vs Red Light District when it came to this symbol, I'm just grateful we didn't walk past any obvious "houses of repute" ha ha!

…I also found the shroom sign beneath it to be a hoot.

Lots of reminders that we were experiencing a different culture.

Ok here's another big one. BIKES. I had no idea that Amsterdam is actually HUGE on bikes. 

Well actually, this whole country is. 

They have wide bike lanes along every street, traffic lights for the bikes, it was so interesting! Even in the quiet small town we slept in, there were bike lanes, and our lodgers gave us free use of their bikes during our stay. Definitely a Netherland staple.

Bikes are used more than cars, and with that come interesting models built to accommodate multiple people. I want this bike.

Lots of tandems, and wheelbarrow bikes????? I'm guessing you've gotta have lots of trust in the steerer for those guys, especially in a bustling city like this!!

 

Sleeping child alert.

Some people put ghetto prison bars on their front windows…but those in Amsterdam take it up a notch. Cool!

Searching for food & making our way down to the Bloemenmarkt.

Loved the drawbridges!

Loved everything pretty much.

Goats above your doorway? Love it!

Found the Bloemenmarkt! The floating flower market!

So fun to wander through here. I don't have a garden, but it made me wish I did. I wanted to buy all sorts of bulbs!

It smelled so good!

Those are huge bulbs, I must say.

In a few of the shops they had dried flowers hanging all over the ceiling. COOL.

Ah, our first encounter with the huge cloggers. We would soon discover that they have huge ones at most tourist photograph spots in Holland, but since this was the first, we plopped Max in. 

I don't know why a ship shop was of such interest to me, I think I just liked saying it a bunch.

 Tasha had to return to the car to change Max's diaper, but before Rachel and I went back to join her, we did a bit of exploring. We found this store next to the flower market. SO glad we chanced a walk inside.

Samples everywhere. I would've loved to buy some as gifts for people, but I was nervous about shipping a dairy product. They tasted amazing though!

Rachel wanted some Gelato so we stopped inside a place. I found the Smurf flavor to be a hoot.

We noticed many of the buildings were not exactly vertical ha ha!

man…who wouldn't want to live on a boat on one of these canals? 

Rachel's wandering instincts got us to this pretty spot.

 Passed this while driving. Those swings up there look terrifyingly high.

 Corbaaaaan Dallaaaas!!!

Ok this will be hard to see, but there are some trees lined up across the canal. They do this strange kind of pruning where they make little wall/barrier thingies with the branches, connecting the trees.

No color filtering, these clouds were seriously blue! How amazing is that?

Here we are at our sleeping spot! It felt like the New England area. 

Ya…those stairs and Max…eek.

Took some pictures of houses before we left the next morning.

Tash got accosted by an angry goose.