Netherlands 7: De Keukenhof

The Netherlands is famous for its flowers, and in the spring a favorite for tourists is 'De Keukenhof' where fields and fields of flowers are displayed. Sadly enough, even I had never been, so we took this opportunity to go as a family. It was a little early especially considering the cold winter, but we still greatly enjoyed the beauty of it all. So did the girls. We were there for almost 3 hours and they loved it, despite the rain. See for yourselves.

As it was so rainy we had had enough and wanted to drive home. However, after 1 km, we were stuck in a traffic jam forever, so we took the first exit we could find and drove to Amsterdam. We were lucky to get some blue sky while driving there. After parking the car and asking for some directions within the city, I managed to steer us immediately into the only streets I did NOT want to go to: the Walletjes (the red district) I felt awful and like the biggest fool, especially being there with the kids. Tjonkje had ofcourse no clue, and we managed to get the girls out of there without them knowing what was going on in that street, except for some 'funny smells'. There were some very close to naked women behing 3 windows, but luckily Sofia looked the other way, and I covered Lilian's eyes enough for her to not notice either. We made it pretty unscathed, except for me, I felt bad for another few hours, but could laugh about it too. Typical for me. Oh well. We ended up on a fair, where the girls and I took a ride on the rotating and rising swings, it felt like we were at least 100 ft up in the sky. Man, can feelings of fear change once you become a mom! The girls loved it though, and I personally did too. We also took a canal boat tour which was fun! Some more pictures of that!

Amsterdam has a town-square, famous for its pigeons. The girls had a lot of fun chasing them!