Pioneer Day

 We had a nice pioneer dinner of Dutch oven chicken. We had Korth’s over and Davis join us.

After dinner we played the board game “Crossing the Plains”.

We watched fireworks from our home, and Josh did sparklers that night.

Netherlands

 Netherlands

We stayed very close to the station, and in the morning we took the train from Antwerp to Amsterdam

When we arrived we bought our metro passes and dropped our bags off at the hotel.

We are lunch at a cafe right across canal from our hotel.

We had a canal tour booked, and were a little confused about the starting location. Luckily, McKinley got us there with her excellent navigation skills!

Seeing the city by canal was the perfect way to see and hear a lot of the history of Amsterdam.

The pointy building below was called the crying tower, because that's where family would go watch their seafarers leave off on their voyage.

One of the old ships in the canals.

The dam seen here is what Amsterdam is named for.

After the canal tour, we went on a mini walking tour of part of Amsterdam using Rick Steve's walking tour off and on. We ended up walking through part of the red light district. We even saw a daylight Red light worker in her window. 

We ate fresh stroopwaffels. Kent prefers pre-packaged.

Wandered the busy Dam Square

Checked out souvenir shops

We didn't get tickets to tour Anne Frank's house, but we visited the outside and took pictures.

For dinner we had Dutch pancakes.

Then we went to look at a windmill in town.

We returned to our hotel and watched the canal light up at night. It didn't get dark until after 10 pm.

The next day we had a full-day tour to Rotterdam Delft, and The Hague.

On our way to the tour pick-up location.

Our tour was in a van with another family from India who had 4 members.

Our first stop was Rotterdam. We saw a lot of interesting architecture in this city.

This is a building with a big marketplace inside.

Then we visited these famous yellow buildings. One unit was for sale for around $400,000.

Next up is Delft, where Kent's father was born and lived until they emigrated when he was 6. 

We started off in the Market Square with a little bit of a history lesson. Then the tour guide let us explore on our own for a bit.

We quickly walked to find Kent's father's childhood home. It was about 10 minutes walk from the Market Square. 

Here it is! Nieuwe Schoolstreet 56, Delft.

We then quickly grabbed some lunch and popped into a cathedral in town real quick. 

Then we picked up some chocolate to bring back home. It was delicious!

Next on the tour was a stop at the Royal Delft factory. We could have spent a lot more time here, but with our tour we had to stay on our toes and keep going to stay on time.

Hand painting the pottery

After Delft we were off to The Hague.

This is where the seat of the government is, the Binnenhof. However, it's currently under construction, so we entered into a courtyard to look around for a few minutes, but that was as far as we could go.

Another view of the Binnenhof

Mauritshuis

This is an old "sugar" house. Currently it is an art museum that house The Girl With the Pearl Earring along with many other works.

Some beautiful Rembrandt originals!

The Peace Palace

This houses the International Court of Justice. Since COVID, they have not reopened the inside of the building to the public. 

After the Hague, our tour guide dropped us back off in Amsterdam near the Rijksmuseum. We didn't get tickets to go inside though, so we walked around the gardens outside. We could only stay for a bit before they ushered us all out for closing time. 

Then we took the metro back towards our hotel to grab some dinner and get some sleep.

In the morning we rode the train to the airport and flew back to SLC.