Randall & Debbie's Amsterdam Adventure



Last week Debbie & I went to Amsterdam, The Netherlands for a short vacation. It was Debbie's idea to celebrate my birthday - I turned 45 on the 23rd. We left Boston Thursday evening and had a direct flight to Amsterdam. We arrived in 6 hours but it was Friday morning already there. After we got to our hotel the first thing we did was take a nap!

After that we decided to hit the Van Gogh museum. Unfortunately there was a bit of rain & wind and by the time we got there we were pretty wet. It was worth the wet walk, though, and by the time we left and got some coffee it was clearing up. We strolled through one of the bigger parks in the central area.



We saw a nice rainbow and sunset - more photos are here.
We ate at a vegetarian place that nonetheless had a smoking section! There is a lot more smoking in Europe it turns out.
After dinner we lucked upon a wonderful photography retrospective of Henri Cartier-Bresson at a nearby museum.

The next day we decided to hit the Rembrandt House - a museum that reconstructs Rembrandt's home.





These are reproductions of his bed and paint-making area. It was a very interesting place.

Later in the afternoon we went on a canal boat tour - a popular tourist thing to do.



This page has more photos from the canal tour.

On Sunday we got up early (to avoid long lines) and went to the Anne Frank House - a museum in the location where Anne and her family hid from the Nazis. A moving experience.

In the afternoon we went to an outdoor museum outside Amsterdam.
It's just 4 stops on the train - train travel is a pleasure in Europe.



More photos here.

For my Birthday on Monday we got up really early to visit Brugge in Belgium. Brugge is a beautiful 2000 year old city, somewhat "frozen in time". Unfortunately it was frozen in other ways as well - really cold!



More photos from Brugge here.
We walked around for a few hours but I wanted to get back to Antwerp to sample some Belgian beers.
Antwerp is a beautiful city as well.



More photos from Antwerp here.


On Tuesday we traveled to The Hague to visit my cousin John and his wife Dawn.



We had some lunch and visited the Escher museum. More photos from The Hague here.

After we returned we had dinner at a funky (but pricey) vegetarian restaurant.



Some final random pictures here.

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