394 - My First Trip to Europe XI

First off, mom is out of the hospital and in a (different) rehab facility.

Rich picked me up bright and early Saturday morning and map in hand, we headed to Amsterdam, approximately 140 miles away!

The beauty of the drive was incredible, as the tulips were out in full bloom. Then we saw the windmills.. old silent sentinels seemingly protecting the hills and fields, though none of them were turning.

Arriving in downtown Amsterdam, I was driving and can remember my mouth hanging open for extended periods of time of the vast differences in the 3 countries I’ve visited so far. The first thing we did, is stop at a visitors center to find where we could get a room for the night. While standing there, I spotted in a window, a booklet named “The Beer Drinkers Guide to Brew Pubs in Amsterdam” which I just HAD to have! The bad news was, it was “Queens Day” in Amsterdam and there wasn’t a hotel room to find within 60 miles, so I bought the booklet and we found a place to park the car for the day and we set off exploring.

The canals were incredible, and were everywhere, with boats floating up and down them every few seconds. We bought a day long water taxi ticket, and took one around the city just to look around. We saw the house that Anne Frank lived in during World War II, and other places of interest as we floated around the city.

 

After exiting the boat, using my newly purchased book on brew pubs, we found the Cafe Hansel and Gretl (see picture at left) and stopped in for a beer. Two younger ladies owned and ran the pub, and the beer was delicious!

 

Walking around after our beer and conversation with the pub owners, we wandered into what I can only call the drug district.

If you ‘embiggen’ the picture at right, you’ll see the building with the black sign says it’s the “Hemp Museum”. The place on the left is the “Cannabis Connoisseurs Club”. Go figure. *LOL*

 

We took the requisite stroll down the red light district (no photographs allowed), chuckled at the concept but amazed at some facets of it, and made it back to the brewpubs. Our last stop was at a pub called the “In De Wildeman Beer Cafe”. Rich took my picture in front of the sign which I thought was pretty funny, and to the right is the beer menu. It was a wonderful, and very old place and we had a great time sampling some of the batch made brews from Holland.

Rich and I had dinner after that, and decided to head back to Germany, where we’d plan our next two day adventure.. and on the way back we decided to go to….

Brussels!

More later this week….