Koninginnedag

Queen's Day is finally here!

Queen's Night

Queen's Night is a combination of a massive city-wide pre-party in anticipation of Queen's Day, which is tomorrow, AND set up and prep for the all-day party that will ensue. Click here for more info and some pictures. You can also do a google image search to get a sense of what tomorrow will be like. Don't worry, we have our Orange ready.

This evening I started spotting what I call "pissers" all over the city. They are very colorful and designed for men to just stand at and pee instead of peeing in the street or into canals, which is what usually happens. It's kind of funny to see in action.

Sky buckets over the Rhine River!

Because we love a good view, and I was not keen on climbing all of the stairs to get to the top of the Dom church, we decided to ride on the sky buckets across the river!



Dave showed some fear...


I showed some excitement...


The rain had stopped and we got some gorgeous views of the city!


Fun was had.

Cruising on the Rhine River

Even though the weather was crappy today, we decided to take a little river cruise on the Rhine.



As you can see, it was quite wet.


But, we still got some great views of the city.

A day walking around Cologne

Cologne, Germany at night

The view out of our hotel window...

And then it rained...

How very representative... the entire week my brother was here we had amazing sunny gorgeous weather... the morning he leaves the rain clouds roll in.

Quint turns 1

Today we went to Quint's 1st birthday party and it was so much fun. The highlight of the day was watching him eat a cupcake with blue frosting. Yummers.

Night time canal cruise

My brother is bigger than this car!

More than the cultural sights of Amsterdam, my brother has been interested in all of the different cars he sees around here. No surprise, I'm sure. Anyway, here is one of our favorites. It is a car for handicapped or disabled people. You see, in Amsterdam there are no handicapped placards or designated parking spots. You just get a car like this and park it wherever you want to! We often see them driving in the bike lanes or parking on the sidewalk.

frites frites frites!

It might be hard to tell from these pics, but we're lovin' these frites!!!

Only 6 more weeks!

When in Amsterdam...

I'm not the only one who is excited that Brother is here!

My Brother arrives TOMORROW!

He may be eating fish and chips in London today, but tomorrow he'll be in Amsterdam! I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself!!!

Our night time gondola ride

Last night after dinner we went on the gondola ride I had been dreaming about for years! It was even more beautiful and romantic than I had imagined it would be. The night time air was warm and still, and there was no one out on the canals but us. Other than the water lapping at the edges of our gondola there was complete silence.



The whole experience was so magical and surreal. As we zipped along the canals I kept saying, "this reminds me so much of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Dinsneyland!" I kept expecting some shutters to fly open and some fake mechanical lady to pop out.


Just as we were about to pass under the Rialto Bridge, our gondolier says, "now now!" and then he started making kissing noises. We figured out what we needed to do after that.

Venice highlights

I took over 300 pictures while we were in Venice. Here are just a few of my favorites. We had the most amazing time!