Lunch in Amsterdam with AWCA

Today I went to Amsterdam and met some women from the American Women's Club of Amsterdam for lunch.  It was quite an outing!  I walked to the Haarlem train station (about a 20 minute walk from the house). And took the Sprinter train:

 to the restaurant

where we had a nice lunch of all kinds of tapas and sangria!  There were eight of us there for lunch. It was nice to meet other women from the States who can relate to being new in a different country! The women were from all over....mostly the East coast.

After lunch I walked around Utrechtsestraat and saw:

My favorite sandwich shop in the world!

Afterwards I headed to the Pijp area where I wanted to look for a pretty braided rope to hang the tapestry we bought in Bruges. I walked over to the Albert Cuyp Market:

It's like a flea market that goes on for blocks and blocks! Pretty much anything you want to buy is there,  except braided rope!

So I headed back home....I decided to walk to Amsterdam Central, which was 2.8 kilometers away. Along the way I saw:

Look closely, you can see how much these buildings have shifted!  Even the windows are crooked!

From there I got back on the train back to Haarlem. It's about an 18 minute train ride from Amsterdam Centraal to Haarlem. From the Haarlem station I walked home again.  Now it's time to prepare dinner.  Tomorrow I will be spending the day at home cleaning and doing more laundry.

My son, Kevin, just passed the halfway point of his deployment in Afghanistan! Yippee!!!

The snow has melted!

Overnight the snow has melted!  It's so warm (41 degrees) today, it feels like spring in comparison to the last couple of weeks......Just two days ago people were skating on this canal!

The daffodils in our kitchen window are blooming!

Today I did laundry!  It takes 3.5 to 4 hours per load to wash and dry in the same machine.  Afterwards, the clothes are still damp, so they have to be hung to dry!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Brugge, Belgium for the weekend!

Friday Andrew took the day off from work so we could take a short trip to Brugge, Belgium.  Friday morning Natasha met me at the house and went with me to the Town Hall in Haarlem so I could register as a resident.  Now I'm officially a resident of Haarlem!

At around noon Andrew and I packed up the car and headed towards Brugge.  On the way we stopped in Rotterdam, Netherlands to buy some coffee for our Nespresso maker.

We arrived in Brugge around 4:00 in the afternoon.  We stayed at the Rosenberg Hotel, which was within walking distance of the town square. From our room we had a view of the canal!

We checked in to our room, then went for a walk downtown to have dinner.

We had dinner at the Cafe Francais where I had the specialty-Moules (Mussels!)

Afterwards we just walked around town for a bit and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we got on a City Tour. It was a small van that took us around the whole town. We saw so many pretty areas:

After the tour we walked around town. We went through a park, then into several cute little shops!

Later, we went to a restaurant for an evening snack after seeing the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".  We had some bitterballen and a Belgian beer....quite yummy!

We walked around a bit more:

The next morning we took one more stroll through the town before heading out.....

On the way home we stopped at McDonald's. I didn't even think about it, but I went in wearing a mink coat-and not one person gave me a second look! The coat had belonged to Andrew's Mom......

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!