Amsterdam – 2001

For the February bank holiday, we took the short flight from London to Amsterdam – about the same flight duration as from Washington DC to Columbus Ohio. We stayed in the old city and the lack of GPS navigation lead to some stress points:

• We accidentally drove our rental car onto a bike path and ended up in a pedestrian square. Took a while to escape.
• We were always having to understand our location – we didn’t want to turn on to a street with fancy dressed up ladies in windows….weren’t ready for that explanation yet.

It snowed before we arrived and the snow had been plowed into piles in a park near the first museum of the day – this was the first time that Annelise had seen (or remembered seeing) snow. Alexandra taught her about snowballs.

We had planned on visiting a lot of museums as Sharon was in the middle of her art history classes as well as a windmill for Alexandra to complete a school assignment. But we ended up only going to the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum as we had a mini-revolt on “sharing time”. So some sledding on the snow piles, a zoo visit, and a boat ride replaced a couple of museum visits.

We did spend a lot of time walking – after the bike path incident we left the car parked. We did come across a “coffee shop” and the girls were amazed by the dogs that were lazily waiting outside as well as buying Alexandra that white “Fjall Raven” hat which we may still have. From looking back through the pictures, it appears Sharon was the only picture taker on this trip.

We did drive south of Amsterdam to Delph (where the blue plates come from) and Rotterdam. The Rotterdam visit had an intent as we were pursuing a project their and I may have opportunity to be on the project and we would move to Rotterdam after my London assignment was complete. Rotterdam totally different – completely bombed in WWII and was rebuilt in the 1950-1970’s and is the “Cradle of Brutalism” – picture from internet below. So – Sharon wasn’t that motivated on the potential next move. Ironically, in doing the internet searches for Rotterdam – the city looks awesome now.

(This was written during the Great Shutdown of 2020. My memory isn’t this good, used internet searches to fill in a lot of holes. If there’s huge fat foot below me, it not my fault – that an advertisement I can’t control).