In the morning, we drove to a German grocery store where we had to relearn all the names for basic food items & discovered...the German's don't take our credit cards :-( We ended up in a really nice mall where we ate and got cash, so it all worked out in the end and we drove to Holland.
June 21, 2013
Our shopping trip this morning made us feel very at home:
Then we decided to check out a small town called Giethoorn that doesn't have any streets, only canals. The town was very quaint with bridges, flower boxes, stained glass windows, and natural stone walkways...every house had a boat...It was recommended by our "Europe for Kids" book...the boys didn't seem impressed, but Sierra and I thought it was cool. After a boat tour, we drove to a campground just outside of Amsterdam.
When Arriving at our campground in Amsterdam...we found it was really nice...it had a restaurant were we had a delicious steak dinner, did some laundry and prepared for our big day in Amsterdam.
June 22, 2013
After a 5 minute walk to the train...we traveled to Amsterdam...it was a wet day
but we still had a great time...we visited the Van Gogh Museum (where they had a scavenger hunt for the kids) and the Heineken Brewery (where Dave and I actually got 3 beers as part of the tour...the kids got soda).At Heineken there was a lot of interactive things to do...design your own beer bottle or t-shirt, games, and at one point, we went on a virtual ride of what it would be like to get turned into beer...the kids loved this part.
Then,we took a canal tour, and had a nice dinner along the canal and walked through just a corner of the famous "Red Light District" to get back to the train (hey...don't judge...we just wanted to look..no harm was done:)
June 23, 2013
Today...we packed up and left Amsterdam...we headed south West to a very small town called Kinderdiijk. This is an area famous for a concentrated amount of windmills...the windmills are very cool with thatched roofs...we took a walk out to several of the windmills and even got to climb up inside one...we also saw a very interesting movie about the history of the area and the use of the windmills. We give this site an "A"!!
After saying good bye to the windmills, we headed for France, where we checked into our campground late.
June 24, 2013
"Bonjour Madame!!!" Is what I woke up to when I went to get breakfast food in the campground store... the woman working the cash register was very friendly and offered us fresh bread and croissants for our 1st morning.After a relaxed morning, we headed into Paris by bus/train. We saw the Eiffel tower in all its glory...
We rode a nearby carousel and watched some amazing fountains across the Seine from the Tower.
We then toured the Paris Underground Sewers (again, a recommendation from our "Europe with Kids "book...not sure what I was expecting but, I know I wasn't expecting to actually smell raw sewage!!! The main thing is...we made it out alive and I made everyone wash their hands sereral times!!! Next, we meandered the streets of Paris only to find...The Arch De Triumph!!! We all decided that we had to go to the top and we could see all of Paris...too cool....below us, in the Arch was a ceremony for "The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier". The boys favorite part was watching the traffic circle below us where 12 very busy streets come together. No lane markings and lots of chaos! Finally, we headed back to camp for some rest as tomorrow is our BIG Disney day:-)
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