Ik ben gek op Holland!

or for those non-dutch readers, I am crazy about Holland! Yes, I'm back and the trip was a trip of a lifetime...AMAZING!  No projects have been done, hubby was left by his lonesome, there is now laundry all over my house, I have no more vacation for the rest of the year, and my daily blog readership has vanished...was it worth it? Totally:)

It was two weeks straight of getting up leisurely, having some wonderful cheese and chocolate sprinkles(yes we do that in Holland) on our bread and a ridiculous amount of tea for breakfast and heading out in whatever direction we felt like exploring!  This country is so clean and beautiful, they do so much with such small space compared to us in North America!

Want to take a little picture tour of some of the places we saw? Take a look!

These delicious deep fried beauties are kroketen! One of our fave dutch meals.  We aimed to have one every day and just about did that. They come with bread in real restaurants, or plain at a snackbar for about a dollar fifty!





Or you can buy them 'out of the wall' in some places! Its like a vending machine for hot items! Crazy:)

A royal palace:

Paleis Het Loo and its royal gardens!














Schiermonnikoog! A beautiful island in northern Holland.













We also went biking like the dutchies do on the island!  They have so many bikes that there are parking garages for bikes in the big cities!

A beautiful bakery, just one of the many we tried out.  Think cream puffs but ten times better!

Panenkoeken of course!!! This is their version of pancakes which come with anything you can imagine in them!







Including pizza ones!! This was A-MAZING!

Beautiful Canal houses in Amsterdam!

Windmills everywhere, for all kinds of uses! Others may have invented it, but the dutch utilized it beyond anyone else!

A sobering morning at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. No pictures allowed so you can only see the front of the simple house hiding the amazing story of this young girl.

Followed by a less sober visit to the Heineken Experience!









This barely touches all that we saw but it was amazing to see all these little pieces of the dutch traditions we were raised with come alive!  Coming home was pretty hard after the whirlwind tour making it to 10 out of 12 provinces of the Netherlands but the best part of coming home?  Finding the house cleaner than when I left thanks to my sweet husband:)  And now life returns somewhat to normal...but I feel a little less phony saying I'm Dutch now!  What a wonderful, fun, crazy, beautiful vacation!

Tot Ziens Everyone! I will try to return soon with some new projects:)

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