When I realized that Chris' 30th birthday was going to fall on Easter weekend, I "hopped" to planning a little getaway. Not being able to fly anymore (34 weeks prego!), we decided on going up to Amsterdam- just a two hour drive north. I know what you're thinking, IS there a better party spot for a 30th birthday?!!? What with all the tulips, pancakes, windmills and canals! Well the answer is no! We had a blast :)
First stop on our mini road trip was the world famous Keukenhof in Lisse, Holland. This is an amazing indoor/outdoor botanical garden, open mid-March to mid-May every year. You could spend the entire day here walking around the perfectly designed and planned flower beds- mostly tulips but other pretty flowers as well. There is a classic old windmill that you can climb up to the top of, and on this really windy day it was whipping around like crazy!
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| A hedge maze! |
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| For my swollen prego feet! |
The outside of the Keukenhof was maybe the best part, just field after field of different colored tulip in lines stretching as far as you can see.
After that it was back in the car and off to Amsterdam (just 30 more minutes or so) We stayed in a nice hotel right by the museum district and one of the major canals. We checked in then went right out to explore. Just crossing the street was pretty terrifying. Living in Brussels we are used to crazy drivers and even trams coming from all directions, but here we found a new insane danger....the BIKES! People in Amsterdam FLY down the "bike lanes" which are completely indistinguishable from the sidewalk- with just a tiny little bell as a signal meaning "get the hell out of the way or I'll run you over!" For the birthday dinner we went to a restaurant my friend recommended called Balthazar's Keuken (kitchen) which was SO good. Just a tiny place run by a couple with a set menu (all you chose is your main course between two options) The owners were really nice, food was delish, we would love to go back. We got great news that night that the Herron's had their baby earlier in the day. Little Olivia and Chris share a birthday!
Easter Sunday we got up and had some delicious Dutch pancakes. They are almost like a thicker crepe, with the filling (fruit) baked right in. It was such a sunny nice day, we booked a canal cruise that started right outside our hotel. The "blue boat" took us all around the city, past some really cool looking house boats, Anne Frank's house, through a lot of the historic districts and even to the harbor. After that we headed over to the Van Gogh museum, which was funny because my parents had just seen a lot of his work in Philadelphia the weekend before. So we missed a few of the more famous paintings, but still got to see his self portraits, the sunflowers and a lot of less famous, but impressive paintings. After lunch we walked over to the Heineken "Experience" which is a tour of the old Heineken brewery. Chris probably enjoyed this more than me, but then again he got to drink my beers (you get two with your ticket!)
Monday we had reservations for a Dutch cheese tasting at the Reypenaer cheese house. This was very cute, set up like a little classroom where we sampled, graded and analyzed a bunch of their yummy cheeses. Chris and I are both horrible at identifying what a cheese smells or tastes like....um cheese, hello? But we still passed the course :) We bought some to take home and along with a Guillotine cheese slicer- which is super fun!
It was great weekend, we love all things Dutch!
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