Amsterdam Adventure....And Then Some

Obviously from the title Brad and I have checked off another fun adventure from The List....but we'll discuss that a little later.

It seems that so much has happened since my last post. I believe my exact words were "there are no exciting trips to speak of" and I'm quite certain that I jinxed myself (in a good way) by saying that. In a matter of two weeks our calendar has started to fill up throughout the rest of the year. And by "calendar" I mean figuratively speaking because I no longer have one. Apparently day planners and calendars are very rare here and now that my 2008-2009 At a Glance Planner ended in July, I'm completely lost. Ugggh.

Now I now the anticipation is killing you...."what are the Binghams' going to do next?!" Ok, probably not. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I just have this weird feeling that the minute I say "we're going to _________!!!!" something will happen to screw it all up and then you'll have to listen to me rant on here about how that really cool trip I told you about got cancelled. So I'm really doing this for you.

Instead I'll just recap the events of the past few weeks:

I spent Saturday before last on an all day shopping spree with Anica, Mariam, and Melissa. We started at a boutique-type outlet place in Wiesbaden that has great jeans marked way, way down (just my kind of place). Then we spent the rest of the afternoon in Frankfurt on a mission to find Melissa some appropriate business shoes for her munchkin-sized feet. A surprisingly hard task but we were successful. Before leaving Anica insisted we swing by her favorite, favorite, favorite ice cream place. I'm thinking some specialty gelato cafe, so you can imagine my surprise when we were standing in line at Haagen-Dazs. I chuckled on the inside but didn't have the heart to tell her Haagen-Dazs is, in fact, an American company and I've had it more times that I can remember. Oh well.

Brad was a trooper and hung out with Stella all day. I believe "welcome to my world" may have been whispered under my breath when he told me what a handful she was all day.

Sunday was A LOT of fun. Our German friends, none of whom are actually German, wanted to enjoy an American brunch. I made Sausage Casserole, a Blueberry Maple Breakfast Bake, fluffy biscuits, tons of fresh fruit and, of course, mimosas. We had a couple bottles of Champagne left from our wedding and we figured what better way to enjoy it than with friends. On top of that, Tommy and Melissa supplied the tasty Bloody Mary's. We will definitely have to do that again soon!

Tasty Champagne

Now for the really exciting stuff. It was decided on Wednesday that we should go to Amsterdam for the weekend. We'd been talking about it for months now and with the summer almost over we figured we'd better time than NOW? Amsterdam is approximately a 4 hour drive from here (I bet we could get there in 3 with Brad driving on the Autobahn) but with 5 people in one car we opted to do the USO Tour instead. Basically you get on a bus at 3:30 in the morning, sleep on the way (yeah right) and when you wake up you're in Amsterdam. We'll pretend that that is exactly how it went (have you ever tried sleeping on a bus?) Anyhoo, we made it. We spent the first part of our morning viewing the Van Gogh Museum. It's pretty amazing to be standing in front of an original painting that you've seen so many times before.

We made friends with a girl, Amanda, from North Carolina who was traveling alone. She and her husband had spent the last two weeks traveling ALL around Germany before he went back to Afghanistan. Amsterdam was her last trip before flying home. We all had a blast together!

Enjoying cupcakes (and NOT special brownies) with our new friend

I just really liked this door.

I was unaware that Amsterdam is a city with what seems like a squillion canals. It's actually only 4 main canals that form a semi-circle around the city but you can get practically everywhere on water. This was a pretty neat way to see the city and go from place to place, however, if/when we go back I would much rather rent a bike and stay the night.

Amsterdam is eclectic, to say the least. You will see just about all walks of life here. And I mean ALL. I suppose with both marijuana (which I don't even know if I spelled that right) and prostitution being legal, what would you expect? Sure, we visited the infamous Red Light District in broad daylight to see what that was all about....ummm, I don't think "interesting" is the proper term. But there is so much more to Amsterdam to see. I really enjoyed the Bloemenmarkt. It's the world's only floating flower market and it is a pretty cool sight to see. Unfortunately, they don't allow you to take pictures. We also visited the church where Rembrandt is buried. We just happened to be there while the massive pipe organ was being played. Amazing. The one thing we didn't get to do was see the inside of the Anne Frank House. The line was absurdly long and we figured that just gives us an excuse to go back.

Gotta love wooden shoes :)

We were back home by 1:00 am and spent Sunday relaxing and hanging out with the pup. We cooked burgers and dogs with Tommy and Melissa that evening and crashed early....well I did, Brad stayed up until 1:30 watching Tiger lose. :( So sad.

All in all, it was a good marble weekend!