The beauty and variety of the flowers at Keukenhof was amazing.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking…  

When we were at Keukenhof they were celebrating Vincent Van Gogh, and had some cool installations. It was perfect timing because Quinnie had just been learning about him at school (she also got to see some of his actual paintings in person when we went here). They took scenes from his paintings and turned them […]

Keukenhof is one of the world’s largest flower gardens. They plant around 7 million flower bulbs per year! We came for the tulips, but this place turned out to be so much more. There was so much to see here that I’ll have to break it up into 3 blog posts… my little tree huggers […]

“The Begijnhof is the only inner court in Amsterdam which was founded during the Middle Ages, and therefore lies within the Singel — the innermost canal of Amsterdam’s circular canal system. The Begijnhof is at medieval street level, which means a meter below the rest of the old city center. It is unclear when exactly […]

Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands. It’s my all time favorite city so far. Simon and I were lucky enough to live here 15 years ago (for 15 months), and I’ve missed it. I couldn’t wait to get back here and take a walk down memory lane. We only had one day here […]

I think Kiera checked out every computer screen available in the museum. cool display about how the tilt in the Earth’s axis is responsible for the seasons Kiera checking out T-Rex leg to scale Kiera watching a hologram video of a dinosaur egg hatching (in the orange box). Video below… Is that real (lol!)? dinosaur […]

We drove to Leiden for one of our long weekends. I have to say the Dutch cliché is true- windmills everywhere! The girls loved the hotel we stayed at for a few reasons- The big pond with turtles and koi in the lobby. Quinnie spent hours here. View of the lobby from our room. Can […]

Here’s the last batch of pics from the Zuiderzeemuseum… Quinnie drying fish skin Look how happy Kiera is to have found a dandelion (Pusteblume) to make a wish on. One of her favorite things to do… lilacs! On the way home I snapped a few pics of the architecture in Enkhuisen. It’s such a beautiful […]

“Zuiderzeemuseum is a mostly open air museum village set up to mimic the architecture and ‘atmosphere’ of village life around the Zuiderzee throughout history.” (Wikipedia) You need a full day to explore this place (and we still didn’t see everything!). There’s lots to do here. I ended up with so many photos that I’ll have […]

“Zaanse Schans is a neighbourhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk in the municipality of Zaanstad in the Netherlands.” That sentence from this village’s Wikipedia page cracks me up! Those locations sound made up- like they’re from a fairytale story or something. Maybe that’s kind of fitting since the place looks like this… so many windmills! The […]

The Binnenhof is a Gothic castle/ complex of buildings in the city center of Den Haag. It was built in the 13th century, and is the oldest House of Parliament that’s still in use in the world (from Wikipedia link above). entrance The Ridderzaal Simon bent down to tie his shoe and the girls tackled […]

The Peace Palace in Den Haag (The Hague) houses the International Court of Justice, which is the principal judiciary body of the United Nations. It’s Wikipedia page is pretty interesting (largely quoted in this post). It states that Andrew Dickson White, whose efforts were instrumental in creating this court and securing the funding to provide […]

We finally made it to Den Haag. What a cool city! Simon likes it even better than Amsterdam. I really like it also (but Amsterdam will always have my heart). Wish I’d gotten a better pic of this (snapped this as we were driving by). Not only do they have double decker bike racks, but […]

This national museum (created in 1912) has antique houses and farms from different parts of The Netherlands. They have reenactors demonstrating the everyday life of Dutch people in the past. The girls were invited in for a cup of tea by one of the reenactors. She made it the old fashioned way with brown rock […]