Amsterdam (New Years) - The home of Stroopwaffles

     2015!!!! That means a new year if exciting trips, wonderful family moments and hopefully better test results! 2014 was amazing, bearing many lessons - new friends and lovely family trips! This year Amsterdam had the lucky turn of having us for new years. As some may know, Stroopwaffles are famous in The Netherlands, so are tulips and dutch clogs. New Year this year was full of those things. 

    Amsterdam was the second stop on the Winter break tour. This leaning city is built on canals and history. Taking boat tours, strolling around the streets, eating in slanted restaurants and peeking into cute boutiques was only half of the city. What built up most of the tourist's interest was the Anne Frank House.

Museums are big in Amsterdam. You have the Anne Frank House, talked about later, Rhys Museum (which we visited) the Van Gogh. Art and play and ice skating and everything, everywhere! Filmed in The Fault In Our Stars, The Anne Frank house grabs the most attention. A girl, 13 went into hiding from the Nazi's in the office of her dads. It was called the Secret Annex. She lived soundlessly there for 2 (maybe more) years until someone went behind their backs and ratted them out to the nazi's. The only member of the family to survive was the father Otto Frank, who later found Anne's Journal and published it.  It was truly amazing to see how they lived. On the same day, Sofia then 12, turned 13.  So that made even more of an impact.

     We visited many restaurants, cookie bakeries, doughnut stalls and found some places to add to the list when we come back. Our hotel was walking distance from about anything - again staying in a condo - and you really got a taste of life in Amsterdam. Night life was far more intense than day life - but a nice hot chocolate on a cold morning sometimes made you think twice.  After all is was cold - so good to bring warm clothes and many many scarves and gloves. After two days in the main city Amsterdam, we traveled to the next city over. We went to Vassanar to visit friends that used to live in Hong Kong. 

   First day we went to Delft (in town) and looked at all the slanted houses - gathering stroopwaffles and dutch cookies. We looked at porcelain houses in a porcelain shop and bought a few (for the memories) and then we biked too a dutch friend of our friends and light up firecrackers in the street. With much struggle - we made it too midnight. I got to celebrate my third birthday (adding another piece of cake to the belly) with them. It was a real dutch experience. 

Amsterdam is beautiful and definitely one to visit again! Happy New Year and best wishes for 2015!