Amsterdam.

It's been a bit since my last post...we've just celebrated our 2-month German anniversary. But, for like a week I thought we'd already been here 3 months 😁... Somehow time feels like its moving both slow & fast all at once, do you know what I mean?? There have definitely been a few tough days, but there have been many more that have made me feel lucky, that have been eye-opening, that have brought our little family joy. SO, I've decided to find the silver lining in my accounting flub & look at it as an extra month of euro-travel potential ;).

That brings me to our most recent getaway! Jason ended up with some time off last Friday & we had a totally free weekend...so we decided we should take advantage of living in Europe, pick a spot & go! Because it was last minute, we wanted a driveable destination and our current location makes that both an easy (because there are so many options) and difficult (because there are so many options) decision! Jason's been to the Netherlands on a few occasions for work and had been dying to show me Amsterdam. So with less than 24hrs notice, we loaded up the car and headed out for our first family road trip. It's just about a 4 hr drive from our house. Not bad, but Asher & long(ish) car rides go together like [insert stuff that doesn't go together here] ... Our busy baby did as well as can be expected, but the trip made for a fussy day 1 in Amsterdam. We were only able to explore for a couple of hours before we needed to head back to the hotel to get Mr. Minion to bed. So we grabbed a bottle of wine & settled in for some baby snoozes and caught up on Netflix. [We're currently into season 2 of LOVE. It's HILARIOUS, watch it].

We had breakfast the next morning at a really delicious, teensy-little restaurant called Greenwoods. It got great reviews on Trip Advisor and it totally lived up. It's a super cozy spot serving up a modern English breakfast. Jason & I both loved our dishes. And Asher was a huge fan of the soda bread.

Afterwards we headed to the Van Gogh museum. We had booked tix ahead of time and took a leisurely sightseeing stroll to the museum from breakfast.

Bicycle/Door combo FTW... 👇I think their owner and I could be great friends.

We weren't able to take pics of the actual artwork, but did find some cute photo opp moments while at the museum. Not surprisingly, Asher was one of the only babies at the museum. He slept in his stroller for most of our tour, but when he woke up he was quite the hit. He made lots of friends, some Italian tourists even kissed his hand, calling him 'bello bambino.' We opted to do the guided audio tour [see stylin' headphones below]. It's easy to say meh let's just save the $5 and tour ourselves, but we found it really helped to engage us in the history/meaning behind each piece and gave us points of conversation along the way. Highly recommend.

The weather was pretty good in the afternoon. The sun came out and it was in the upper 50s. I can tell you, we're all VERY excited for spring over here and can't wait to be able to wear [& pack] fewer layers...Comparison between this trip and our last -- way fewer family pics. Our awkward "Hi, umm excuse me, would you mind taking a picture of us?" pics weren't my favorite...

BUT...how cute are these studs...

I really LOVE, loved Amsterdam. The crooked buildings along the canal are full of charm. The shopping is fantastic & there are so many great spots to stop for a coffee or cocktail.

We shopped on Kalverstraat (home to many of the familiar European stores) & The Haarlemmerdijk (boasting lots of independent labels, vintage and Dutch home stores). All these incredible shopping options and we ended up buying lots of cheese & chocolate. HA! We did leave with a few outfits for Baby Asher, but we plan on making another trip to Amsterdam later this spring or early summer [when the weather is better!] to walk around and shop some more.