"Chad, what do you plan on doing with little wooden shoes? Seriously."

To celebrate our upcoming birthdays, Chad and I decided to take a little trip to Amsterdam. It's been one of the places we've planned on visiting for awhile now and it was great to cross it off our list. Unfortunately, we REALLY, REALLY want to go back again so I guess it's not crossed off completely.

Amsterdam combined some of the best elements of two of my favorite cities. Paris meets New Orleans if you will. The history and beauty of Paris with the hospitality of the deep south. The only thing missing was the food. Amsterdam is a very multicultural city, so it was easy to find Thai and Indian but we never did find traditional Dutch cuisine. We saw the herring booths but we could do without that.

The people of Amsterdam were some of the kindest, most helpful people I've encountered in ALL our travels thus far. They were lovely and warm and when they speak English... you'd swear they were born and raised in the U.S. of A. (Although this is not a prerequisite for me thinking people are kind, nice, etc. when traveling. Just saying.)

We had a pretty packed agenda and, overall, we were able to see most things on our itinerary. The line at the Van Gogh museum was just too long and we ran out of time. Thankfully, we plan on visiting again so I will buy my tickets online and we will be left with no excuse to not check it out.

Since we have a lot going on in our neck of the woods including unpacking, laundry galore, and packing for Chad's stateside school... I'm forgetting the multi-post business and giving you all an extra long post. This will just have to do.

So here we go:

2.5 hours into the 5.5 hours drive we had to stop to change a diaper... you know how it is.

By the time we arrived at the park and ride, took the tram to central station, bought our I-Amsterdam cards, and took another tram to our hotel it was dark and we just called it a night.

Boring.

Friday we started our morning with the Bagel & Bean. This is where I had the best cappuccino in my life. It may have just been one of those instances where I needed caffeine so badly that week old, microwaved coffee would have tasted magnificent but this truly was a wonderful coffee. Their 'alles' (everything) bagel with walnut honey cream cheese was good too.

We walked from our hotel, through the flea market at Waterlooplein and then to the bloemenmarkt, Amsterdam's floating flower market.

Then we headed to the 'Heineken Experience' aka 'the best 20 euro Chad has ever spent' according to Chad of course. Maybe it was the free beer during and after the 'experience' but it was pretty fun. Even for someone who can only have 1.

I think Chad almost peed his pants when he had the opportunity to get a certificate saying he was a 'Master Pourer' (no, I'm not kidding). It only took him 3 tries before he poured the perfect Heineken.

Chad's MASTERPIECE! He plans on framing his cert and hanging it in his mancave one day.

Lord help me.

Our hotel was really cute. We had to move rooms our second night which was no problem and I thought it was funny that they put us in a 'Hollywood' themed room...complete with a sparkly toilet seat. Awesome.

Friday evening I had made reservations to visit the Anne Frank House. If you don't know what I'm talking about you should probably read more.

Seriously.

Saturday morning I was on a mission for the elusive Dutch pancake. We headed to Pancakes! Amsterdam because we got a 25% discount with our Iamsterdam card so why not take advantage? I had the Museli pancake (nothing too Dutch about that), Chad had the American breakfast (he really wanted bacon) and we split the poffertjes (little, sugar coated pancakes). It was a nice way to start the morning.

Not to sound cheap, but we also went on a canal cruise because it was free with our card....

(Central Station Below).

After our cruise, we walked through the Rijksmuseum (which is currently being renovated so they just have a small portion open to explore) and then we had lunch. Chad ignored the warning sign and ordered the double dutch burger anyways.

We also walked through the Red Light District (Mom of the Year right here!), shopped at the flea market buying my desired Delftware and ate Indian (2 nights in a row).

After reflecting on last weekend, I'm already looking forward to another visit!