My Parent's Visit

As most (or all since it's probably only my family) of my readers know already my parents came to spend a week in Europe, visiting me in Amsterdam and traveling to Paris. Since they have been home for quite some time, hopefully you have had a chance to see pictures/hear details of their trip. For the sake of this blog, I will run down the highlights with you, in bullet form. Here we go:

-Kuekenhof: Home of the famous tulip fields!! 

This is one of the most famous sights in Holland. It's a huge garden filled with tulips, some other flowers, old people who walk really slow, and tourists (mostly Asian) with humongous cameras. I'm going to be honest, because I always am, this is not at all what I expected. I, for some reason, was expecting huge fields of multi-colored tulips, planted to form different designs and shapes. That's not it. It's one field of multi-colored tulips, plus a lot of different gardens that all look (pretty much) the  same. I mean after you have seen 500 different kinds of tulips, there is not really a  reason to see 500 more. All in all, good experience, happy that I saw it, didn't quite live up to my expectations.

-Haarlem

Haarlem is a smaller, nicer, ritzier city just outside of Amsterdam. It has a large cathedral and the Corrie Ten Boom house. On the day we visited, all the floats from  the flower parade at Kuekenhof were on display. Think giant parade floats made  exclusively of flowers. Really amazing! Plus, the floats were designed after musicals (Wicked, Sound of Music, Hair, Alice in Wonderland, to name a few) and were really cool!

-Dinner with Julie and Lisa

Most of you have already heard me mention my best friend Julie. As luck would have it, our parents were visiting during the same week. One night, we all got together for dinner at a great Italian place. Afterwards, Julie and Lisa lead us to a little cafe with the best apple pie ever for dessert!

-Vondel Park

One of my favorite places in the city. This is a very beautiful and famous park. My parents were fortunate enough to have nice weather during their visit, so we spent some time people watching in the park!

-Canal Tour

The nice thing about having your parents visit is that you get to do all the things that you want to do but can't afford. One of the top things on my list was a canal tour. We were lucky enough to get on an open-air tour on a small boat, instead of the giant,  ultra-touristy, covered tours. It was only the three of us, one other family, and the captain. It was a very relaxing, yet informative tour!

-Anne Frank House

Unfortunately, I was late and missed this tour!

-Van Gogh Museum

The Van Gogh Museum is a very nice tour, but it should offer a disclaimer stating "you are not going to see any of his famous paintings." All of his most famous works are at  the Louvre or other museums around the world. I did learn a lot about Van Gogh the man and about his influences in each period of his work. We also got to see a lot of really nice paintings, so it was not a waste of time. I enjoyed it for about an hour, then that was enough for me. My dad enjoyed it for approximately 5 minutes.

-Food

Some of the food that my parents had to sample during their visit: fries with good, Holland mayonnaise and curry sauce, Kapsalon, Stroopwafels, Stroopwafel McFlurries, delicious sandwiches (shared outside in Dam Square-one of my favorite parts of the  trip), cheese, pancakes and pastries!

Kapsalon

Fries

Pancakes

Sandwiches in Dam Square

I know this does not do their trip justice, but I wanted to post something so I hope this is better than nothing. I promise I am working harder on the upcoming posts!