After Brussels, we headed north to The Netherlands. I recently read The Hiding Place and was interested in going to see the Ten Boom house that has been made into a museum, sort of. So, we stopped in Haarlem for a bit.
Here are the boys while we waited for Josh to park the car.
We went to St. Bavo's Cathedral while we waited for an English tour to begin at the museum. It was fantastic.
The boys each had a map, and I was following the Rick Steves tour on Josh's phone.
Here is a cannonball in the wall that was placed there in 1573.
A model of the church.
And this. This is an organ that was played by Mozart and Handel. Fantastic, right?
There are thousands of rich people buried beneath the church. This is where the phrase "stinking rich" came from, because the poor would go to worship and would smell the rotting bodies under the church.
There happened to be a jazz festival in the square of the church. It seems that we always luck into big events wherever we end up for the weekend. This was no exception.
Here we are after our Hiding Place tour.
The church.
After Haarlem, we went to Zandvoort beach - which was just a few minutes down the road. It was pretty cold and windy, but everyone had fun.
The next morning, we went to Zaanse Schans, which is a wonderful park filled with old-time Holland stuff.
It's hard to get a good picture these days.
Jordan in some big shoes!
And Maddie.
These are wedding clogs.
There was a wooden shoe demonstration that was wonderful.
The boys talking to Donald and Daisy.
Posing with some stroop waffles.
Our cheese-making demonstration.
Everyone pointing instead of "saying cheese".
Brigham with Darth Maul.
Benson made some friends.
Beautiful, isn't it?
One of the windmills is still used to produce peanut oil. The peanuts, shell and all, are placed on the grinder and are ground into a fine powder. The grinder spins as the windmill turns.
Next, everything is heated up and put into bags.
The bags are placed in a hole and pressed with a big wooden mallet that is lifted when the windmill turns and is dropped down as it continues to lift. Then the oil presses out.
We headed next to Amsterdam, got some bikes, and zipped up our rain jackets. It wasn't pouring at this point, but it started soon!
We rode to the Anne Frank house so Maddie could see it. We couldn't get tickets, and we didn't have the time to wait in line. So, we still haven't been in. Maybe someday.
A family picture in Amsterdam, since we never got one the time before.
The boys didn't complain once. We were literally soaked. It was raining so hard.
Jordan, being Rembrandt.
At the Amsterdam sign.
1 comment:
So, so fun! Thanks for the tour.
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