A concert, comedy, and museums

 8/11: We did some trip planning in the morning, and then biked to the Anne Frank Museum. We had NO idea we needed to buy tickets 1 month in advance! We decided to pop over there to see if they’d call us on the off chance a few people didn’t show up. HA! Turns out it is quite the tourist attraction and major production! They smiled and told us there’s no way we’re getting in. Shoot!

We attended a harp concert in a beautiful church at 2pm. Wow! It was really beautiful!

Then we went for a late lunch/dessert at a local pancake restaurant that Bob had read a positive review about in an airplane magazine. We should have ordered 2 pancakes instead of 4! And now we shouldn’t eat dessert for at least a week!

Really scrumptious

We made a quick stop at home before biking to the improv comedy show at Boom Chicago that started at 7pm. We all laughed a ton, and it wasn’t too inappropriate for the kids :-)

8/12: Today will be a scorching day of heat for Amsterdam, so we decided to spend most of the day at Nemo, the super cool interactive science museum. We spent a fun 4 hours here no problem!

We came home for the kids favorite meals of chicken and pasta (Simone) and Mac n cheese (Quinn). Salad and leftovers for Bob and me! Bob and I took an evening walk (fast becoming a favorite activity). We did our best to stay cool and sleep with no AC and only one fan...

8/13: Bob and I went for a morning walk, ate breakfast together, and the kids did a little school planning. We watched some videos produced by the Anne Frank museum since we couldn’t go visit in person; they were very well done, but of course we’d love to go another time!

Our plan for the day was to visit the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum, but the Van Gogh museum books out 2+ weeks in advance…foiled again! We got tickets for the Rijksmuseum and thoroughly enjoyed our time. We weren’t too disappointed we couldn’t go into the other museum as we’d had enough after one!

We got to see two Van Goghs

Bob, Simone, and I especially liked these two by Anthony Oberman

A grand library dedicated to art history

The man on the right is cheating

Simone and I love this one

Artsy Simone pics

I wish this place sold t-shirts!

We went to a nearby Indian/Nepalese restaurant that I found on TripAdvisor with great reviews. There was a huge picture of Kathmandu that reminded Bob of his time there. He brought up his old photos and shared them with our waiter, who was also from Kathmandu. The food was great from start to finish!

The kids were happy to be home “early” at about 7pm. Bob and I went for a walk in the beautiful evening (still hot, but not as toasty as yesterday). We made our pb n js and got our lunch packed as tomorrow would be an early start to the day for our bus tour around the area outside of Amsterdam.