Ice, Ice Baby...

We saved Amsterdam for the last day of the Fewell's visit. After lunch, a boat ride, and the usual walking tour of the canal streets and the Red Light District (which as Veronica prepares to study sex ed at school, was the subject of a lot more questions than in the past), we decided to take the gang to the Ice Bar. Since it was too early for the hip bar crowd, the kids were allowed to join us for an icy apple juice. The first photo is still outside and Johnny's just pretending to be cold. For Floridians, he and Jimmy were pretty tough to handle the cold while wearing shorts. Check out the boots the girls borrowed.

Not Your Typical Kiddie Show...

These photos show why there was a warning that the gladiator fight at Archeon wasn’t for the squeamish. It also explains why the ground is covered in sand, which is clearly good at absorbing “blood.” We forgot to ask this dead gladiator if they take turns getting killed or if he gets to be pulled out of the arena by his ponytail everyday. By the way, Jimmy’s not afraid; the sun’s in his eyes.

Let's Go Back in Time...

Veronica was especially excited when we decided to go with her cousins to Archeon, an outdoor park recreating the living past of Holland. First we traveled back to the prehistoric times of 5000BC and saw how early man lived. Then we wandered through Roman times during the 2nd century and saw a gladiator fight. We ended the day learning about the middle ages of 1350AD. There were a lot of hands-on activities for the kids including archery (Johnny got a bullseye!) and spinning wool (which was a lot harder than it looked).

Cousins Having Fun...

The girls were just thrilled that their cousins Johnny and Jimmy from Jacksonville, Florida were able to visit during our half term break. The number one place on their list of places to show them was Madurodam, the miniatures park featuring highlights of Holland. Here they are with the model of the De Valk windmill in Leiden; later we visited the real one and climbed the ladders to the top.

Valuable Lessons Learned - Part 8

* Don't try to squeeze 4 adults in a canoe with only 3 seats unless you like to get wet. When Jimmy did this when he hared a Hague Hash, he was very lucky that everyone dunked had a good sense of humor. We were all shocked how fast the canoe capsized and how quickly the 8 beers on board sunk; of course, Jimmy was harassed more for losing the beers than dunking the hashers. Since we missed getting a photo of the action, those involved did an reenactment during the circle.

* When getting on a train with visitors, make sure you actually read the sign before boarding the train. Not only is it embarrassing to be on a train that goes blowing past your station, but you’ll get to hear “Is this is the right train?” for the rest of their visit.

An Enlightening Beer Experience...

OK, maybe it’s not so enlightening, but the Heineken Experience, a quasi-museum, is a lot of fun even for non-drinkers. While the building was a brewery until 1988, it’s now visited by 350,000 visitors annually each paying $15 for 3 beers and an entertaining journey through a giant ad; you have to admire the marketing geniuses that came up with the idea. The girls especially loved the two simulators. In the first, you’re a beer bottle going on a typical journey from cleaning to filling to being shipped and then eventually opened; on the second, you’re riding on the Heineken horse carriage through the streets of Amsterdam. There’s also karaoke, trivia games and two smoke-free bars. You can see that we’re not complaining about being brainwashed. Long live Heineken.

Swinging in Amsterdam...

While I’m sure it’s possible to do a variety of swinging in Amsterdam, the only swinging we’ve done was on this pedestrian bridge. While we’ve seen a few bridges that we thought might swing around rather than lift up, we’d never seen one in action until this visit. We were especially impressed that this much effort was made for pedestrians.

We all thought it was so cool that we had to wait until it swung back into place so that we could walk across it to see what was on the other side. Turned out to be a huge indoor rock climbing gym that Jimmy’s already plotting to take the girls.