Another canal city.

Today is our last day in the Netherlands before heading to Sweden and Norway for a trip with Nick's mom Cindy and stepdad Scott. We couldn't be more excited to be seeing family again! We also now have less than three weeks left on this trip, and it's hard to believe.

We've had a fun few days here in Amsterdam and even got to see one of the friends we made in Tanzania (Hi Amber!). It was nice to have a local take us out and give advice on what to do. More notably, Amber is one of the closest friends we made on this trip so it was really amazing that we were able to visit her so soon. We have done so much this week, including both the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum which were both very cool and very dutch. Amsterdam is great because it's a highly walkable city with several large parks as well as ample public transportation, so it's easy to just explore and see where your feet take you. We were able to spend a couple hours reading in a different park each day in addition to all of our sightseeing. Rick Steves also has a few walking tours of the city and we especially enjoyed the one on architecture. There are several houses that are slanted or leaning, which makes one a little worried they could fall into the canals as they are 5-6 stories tall. Also interesting was how many of the houses have bell ringing posts, maybe a remnant of the more sea faring days of this low country. Amber also recommended drinks on top of the Ramada (a stunning 360 degree view, open top bar) and exploring the Amsterdam Bos (a forest, quite large and in the city).

An interesting note: Amsterdam is at a fairly high latitude so the sun is not really down that much here, i.e. night is really short. It's cool because we both love long sunny days, but it's also been kind of hard to keep a schedule when we don't have specific time restraints, because why worry about the time when on vacation in a city that is extremely safe and well lit (natural mostly and some artificial light). To give you an idea, it is fairly light out until 11:30, and even at midnight you can still see the last evidence of sunlight. By 4 AM, dusk is already underway and the morning birds are chirping. We are so looking forward to seeing how much less night there will be as we continue north!

P.S. Try the waffles with the whipped cream if you come here in any snack shop...trust us.Read more