Houseboats- the Dutch cabin

We had record breaking heat here on Saturday 90+ degrees. We went to visit Loes, Evert, their kids and grand kids on their beautiful houseboat.

View from the living room. 

Playing on shore with younger cousins Boas, Daniel and Alexander.

Evert and Janny.

Loes and Cobus.

Chellie driving the sloop on a tour of the Kaag.

Elliott and Boas on deep conversation about video games.

Rotterdam- our last day here

Touring Rotterdam harbor be boat. The shipping operation here is incredible.

View of Rotterdam from the Euromast, like a Dutch space needle, or the mn state fair ride on steroids.

Janny grew up in Rotterdam. In 1946 she commuted to school on the other side of the river on her bike. She crossed the river in a tunnel especially made for bikes.

This is the bike escalator that takes riders up and down to the tunnel.

At the bottom of the escalator.

Going up again.

Hot days at the beach

We took the train to Castricum north of Amsterdam to join Rich's cousin Marilyn and her family at the beach. They have 3 young children. Here are all the boys digging a big hole so they can take turns being buried.

This is the main parking lot at the beach. Old and young ride their bikes to the beach.

Elliott buried. 

Rich's cousin Marilyn with her children Raya and David.

We stayed at a beatiful farm b&b with rabbits, chickens, guinea pig, and a big yard with trampoline.

Rode borrowed bikes 6km to the beach through a dune park that has wild horses on it. The kids thought we should see buffalo there too.

WWIIWWII - Jewish History and Dutch Experience

Building behind the boys is in the Jewish area of Amsterdam and the building was a concert hall before the war and center for Jewish deportations during WWII.

We spent most of the day at the Duutch Resistance Museum.  It explores the war using the question: how to respond to the Nazi occupation? Collaborate? Adapt? Resist? 

It explored how and why Dutch people responded in all these ways. Ir has a fantastic children's area that told the stories of 4 children. The stories were so well told that Elliott was engaged for several hours and he was the last person ready to leave.

We then visited the Portugguese synagogue,  annorthodox congregation dating from the 17h century. Both boys are wearing kappas/yarmulkes to enter the sanctuary.

Listening to audio guide stories in the sanctuary. 

Then we visited the Jewish Hisorical Miseum where they mentioned Oma's mother's family the Spanjaard textile factory in Borne. We looked for pictures of Oma's father's family but could only find him by looking at the library collection.

Thie evening we had a delicious Ethiopian dinner- the restaurant owner has a brother and sister in Minneapolis. 

Tonight we went out to Amsterdam after dark. It was quite a different vibe from he daytime city.

Mikes Bike Tour 7/14/13

(Elliott is doing the beginning today).  Today we went on a bike tour.  We went to the red light district, there were women in windows in little clothes ane you never knew when they were going to pop up.  The picture is me entering the red light district.  It was a different experience than  I expected. When you look at them, you forget what they are trying to sell and they just look like human manequins. 

(Jennifer blogging now)

We've had a lot of conversations about the Dutch approach to marijuana and prostitution since we arrived in Amsterdam. Ben is quite interested in the public policy and Elliott is just trying to make sense of it all. I'm just glad they want to talk about it.

Here are my monkeys climbing In a cool treetops climbing stricture in Vondelpark. 

We ate lunch in the sculpture park at rijksmuseum. Cool Calder mobiles and this water fountain.

We went in a bike tour through the central amsterdam neighborhoods- including the red light district.

Later wandering the streets we found a taste of home

They have a very chic store store selling the tough and rustic image Red Wing boots. 

We had fun talking to the salesman and hearing how Red Wing is viewed md marketed here.

Dutch breakfast and trip to Amsterdam

Every morning Cobus and Janny set out a delicious breakfast array. From left to right you can see - glass jar of granola, gingerbread tasting breakfast cake, homemade strawberry-red currant jam, applestroop (deep brown apple molasses spread), biscuits in blue can and brown bread. And that's not all...

Cow and goat cheese, tomatoes, chocolate sprinkles, yogurt, butter, milk and tea. Many of these are familiar but not in this way on the breakfast table.

Its so much better than the plain bowl of cereal or fried egg that We have at home.

After breakfast today we left Cobus and Janny - taking the train to Amsterdam.

Arrived in Amsterdam around 2:00 - the city felt huge and confusing at first. We found our way to our lovely studio apartment near Vondelpark.

Here we are on our balcony. Note all the bikes parked along the street.

Here are the boys in their new Holland jackets. Ben notes the jackets make us look like tourists here but we'll look like world travelers when we wear them at home.

Elliott at the theme park

 

(Elliott is blogging today).  This is me Ben and Cameron eating candy apples with sprinkles.  At a theme park/water park 

This is Cameron going off a boat jump ride.  My cousin  who works the park got us tickets.

 For lunch we had sandwiches, these mini hot dogs that came in a can, fries and cotten  candy.

I'm going down the blue free fall slide.  That is us the water park.  

That's us at Eva house after the water park.

Old people selfie.

After the park and Eva house we went out for dinner at a  Indonesian restaurant 

Now we are watching the World Cup.

Family Day- past and present - 7/12/14

The boys, Cobus and Janny in front of great great grandfather Jacobus Kann's house in The Hague. Elise/Oma remembers playing in the turret on the left. Cobus was too young to remember playing here. It was their house until the war.  Today the building houses a law firm.

This was great great gransfather's bank- Lissa and Kann - across the street from Binnehof. Cobus remembers watching the queens procession to mark the start of parliament from the little balcony over the door. 

We biked with Cobus and Janny to see all these sights.

Joined up with Otto, Eva, and her boys Cameron and Jason. The boys played soccer non stop at the beach and back at their house. Excellent for mt boys to have energetic cousins to play with!

Otto and Eva on the beach at Wasenaar.