Destination Wedding

The last week of April we headed out for Mexico. . .not the typical vacation spot when you live in Europe. We were headed there, though, to see Jeff's cousin get married on the beach in our first destination wedding and to spend some time with his family. As much as we have been on the go these first six months of marriage we also were both looking forward to a trip that was pretty much just relaxing on the beach!

The wedding was in Playa del Carmen and all the family was staying in the same resort. It was also an all inclusive resort meaning we would have all the food we wanted to eat and all the booze we cared to drink! :)

The view from our room.....so beautiful!!

Here's a shot of the resort.

Wedding Day!! Here's where the ceremony took place.

Kameron & Abby (Jeff's cousins) and his sister, Jennifer, in the middle

What a great looking couple!! :)

The happy couple during the ceremony

Cheers to the happy couple!!

Jeff and his cousin, Chelsea

You can't party in Mexico without a mariachi band!!

Something blue? Why the shoes of course!! Love it!!

The proud papa, Uncle Pat, dancing with his daughter

The wedding was great and we had such a wonderful time with everyone!! I promised I wouldn't name names on here and tell any embarrassing stories about anyone. I will just say that we all laughed and laughed a lot together!! We have lots of great memories from this trip! Thanks to the Turner family for a great time!!

Amsterdam

First up we took a tour out to the Keukenhof gardens. Sadly we were about a week early to see all the tulips in full bloom, but we still saw some. Plus the gardens were full of hyacinth and daffodils in full bloom so there was still lots of color everywhere!

In Kansas we are used to golden fields of wheat, but the Dutch have fields of tulips. This is what the fields look like in the countryside. . . so much color!! These flowers will be exported all over the world.

Enjoying a beautiful spring day in the gardens!

Did you know they also make those famous wooden clogs

 in the Netherlands, as well? 

I just love all these pretty tulips!!

They also had a massive greenhouse on the property where you could explore hundreds of different varieties of tulips in all sizes and colors. I had no idea so many different types existed!

I'm sure some of you are thinking going to see a garden isn't that exciting. Probably even wondering how I got my husband suckered into going with me. Well it might be because he loves me so much OR it might be because I told him that after the flowers we could go tour the Heineken brewery with free tastings. I'm sure you can guess which one it is :-) Both of course!! The tour was great! You walk through the history of the brewery. Then there are lots of multi-media hands-on exhibits at the end.

Here we are with the first of three free beers we got on the tour. 

Nothing like a cold delicious beer!!

The next day we were off to see the Zaanse Schans. The what?!?! It's a small village north of Amsterdam that was a huge area for windmills and shipping back in the 1600's. They have restored seven windmills that you can tour, along with clog making demonstrations, cheese making demonstrations and tasting, as well as, pewter making. All the housing is painted and decorated in the typical Dutch style. It's a neat area!

Here's a shot of some of the windmills.

 Here's what the traditional style and coloring of houses looks like.

In less than 10 minutes this guy used these two machines to make a clog. It was amazing how quick it was!! Of course that was only half the pair and they would still need to be painted, but it was really pretty easy to make with today's machinery.


Moving on. . . would you ever expect a church to be in this building below???

Our Lord in the Attic Catholic Church

While researching Amsterdam I read about the "Our Lord in the Attic" church. In 1578 the Protestants ran the town of Amsterdam and outlawed Catholic mass. In the mid 1600's a wealthy Catholic merchant bought a canal house and the two houses behind it. He renovated the top three floors into a Catholic chapel, while his family along with the priest inhabited the bottom two floors. It would serve the city center as the Catholic parish for 200 years!! Today it's being restored to it's original decor and from day to day is a museum; however, it is still used at times to celebrate mass for special occasions.  

Fries anyone? :)

A Dutch favorite snack is surprisingly french fries!! There were several places that were just french fry shops with like ten different sauces to chose from to put on your fries! The big difference in the Netherlands is that they eat their fries with mayonnaise! We had to stop one night and get a late snack. Jeff loves mixing mayonnaise and ketchup so as you can see above that's what we got on our fries. I stuck to the ketchup only side!! Regardless the topping.... the fries were delicious!!

Anne Frank's House

The building in the center is Anne Frank's house. We toured the house and got to see where she and her family hid for a little over two years away from the world before they were captured. It was very moving to be there and see it. I remember ready Anne Frank's diary when I was just a kid. I have even more appreciation for it now as an adult.

Last but not least I had to include a couple pictures of what it looks like to look down one of the many canals in the city. As you can see on this bridge above there are bikes parked all along it.... seriously we saw more bikes than cars on this trip. You can also see how all the houses are built right next to each other all the way down.

Here is a typical house boat seen on the canals throughout the city. Some of them actually looked pretty cozy, but not so sure how much I would enjoy having canal cruises drive by everyday. I guess if you get fed up with the city you just pull up anchor and head for somewhere else!!

Amsterdam was a great four days and we hope to come back and visit!!!

Amsterdam - The Fun Facts

Jeff had two days off for Easter weekend so we decided it would be silly to waste a good four day weekend in Geneva when we could see somewhere new. . . so off to Amsterdam we went!! Why Amsterdam? One word. . . .tulips!!! I love tulips! When I saw pictures of the flower gardens in Amsterdam I thought it would be so beautiful to see them in person. There's only about a 6-8 week window to see them in bloom. Plus neither of us had been there before so why not?

First off. . .the where? The Netherlands is just about straight North of us...see the map below. Remember Switzerland is the small country right in front of the the word Europe on the map.

Here's a look at the country up close. We spent our trip 

visiting Amsterdam, the capitol city.

Fun Facts

• The airport in Amsterdam is actually below sea level, 25% of the entire country is below sea level.
• Amsterdam is in the Netherlands. The country is not called Holland even though many people (even from there) refer to it that way. The Netherlands has 12 provinces. Two of them are called North Holland and South Holland. The majority of the population in the Netherlands is from either of these provinces, so people from there tend to say they are from "Holland" to refer to the area of their country. This is in turn has caused many people to believe the country is called Holland.
• They speak Dutch in the Netherlands, but most people speak at least one foreign language. . .typically German or English.
• The Dutch are the tallest people in the world.
• The Netherlands has nearly 1,000 museums, 42 of which are in Amsterdam alone!
• There are still about 1,000 traditional working windmills across the country.
• There are over 1,700 bridges in Amsterdam, crossing over 100km of canals!
• Along those canals are 2,500 house boats of varying shapes and sizes.
• Almost every Dutch person has a bike, and there are almost twice as many bikes as cars.
• The bikes even have their own lanes for traffic in the city.

This bike ramp outside the main train station 

in Amsterdam holds about 7,000 bikes!! 

One more thing about Amsterdam that a lot of people talk about is the "Red Light District." I can tell you that yes it does exist, but it's not what you expect it to be. Sure there are scantily clad girls dancing in windows, but there are literally thousands of tourists walking up and down these streets visiting other sites and sitting down to eat at restaurants. But it's famous in Amsterdam.... it's even clearly labeled on the map from the hotel.

Coffee shops do sell pot and lots of people smoke it as you can smell it about everywhere you go!! So with all that pot smoking you would expect food, right? Well there are people selling donuts and pizza everywhere!! (I would not recommend it as it looks like it's days old.) They even have a "fast food" place that is basically just a long wall of vending machines with hot sandwiches. A cook is in the back making the sandwiches and places them into the display that looks like little post office boxes. Just put your money in the slot, open the door and enjoy your hot sandwich.... genius!!

Our Singaporean Adventures (Part 3)

While Jeff was working during the week I did a little exploring on my own. First up was the Singapore Zoo! I'm pretty sure I haven't been to a zoo since grade school, but I heard it was one of the best in the world so I thought why not check it out. I had so much fun!! I forgot how interesting it could be to go to a zoo. They have done a great job with most exhibits not even looking like cages. In fact at one point I could have reached out to pet the rhinoceros as he came right up to the railing that was just a foot or so away!!! Plus they have three different feeding tours that you can go on for free. You get to follow a zoo staff member from exhibit to exhibit while the other staff feed the animals and learn a little extra info as well. It was really quite cool. Plus since it was feeding time the animals were really active!

Here's me at the little photo op place when you get in the zoo. I felt a little silly posing with the birds, but I had to have at least one picture to prove I was the one there :) I won't bore you with endless pictures of animals, but I have to say if you haven't been to a good zoo lately I would definitely check one out!

One night after Jeff got off work we went to the Singapore Zoo Night Safari! Did you know that over 80% of tropical animals are either nocturnal or crepuscular (active at night or dusk)??? The Night Safari is the first zoo of its kind. There's an hour tram ride that takes you through one half of the zoo. Then there are additional foot paths to explore the other exhibits. It's really pretty amazing!! It's only open 7:30pm - midnight. No pictures of animals here for two reasons. First, you can't use your flash because you could actually make some of the animals go blind. Since the animals are nocturnal most are sensitive to bright lights. Secondly, the lighting is very dim all over the zoo so you would have to have a pretty awesome camera to get good pictures without a flash!

If you read Part 1 of our adventures in Singapore you will remember that I eluded to getting an even higher view of the city. Well we went to check out the Altitude Bar one evening. It's the highest bar in Singapore. It's an outdoor bar on the 64th and 65th floors of a building. . . the absolute top of the building! It was an amazing view, a little unnerving, but still pretty cool!!! We went up about an hour or so before sunset so we got to see the city in day light and night time!

65 stories high above Singapore!!

Remember the Singapore Flyer? Look how small it looks in this picture!!

It's hard to tell in this picture, but we could actually see Indonesia across the water!

It was amazing how many ships were anchored out in the bay waiting to get bunkers. I learned from Jeff that "bunkers" is a shipping term for vessel fuel.

Our hotel was right in the main shopping district so I had to check out some of the malls nearby! There may not be much land in Singapore, but WOW do they know how to use their space effectively!! You might see a mall from the outside and think. . . . "That's a good size mall. . . . 5 stories high!" Then you will be utterly amazed when you go inside and realize that there is ALSO four, yes four more stories UNDERGROUND!!! Plus all these buildings down the main shopping district are connected so you can walk the whole city block underground. It's really quite a maze!!

Lots of high end shopping in Singapore!

The view from our hotel room. I loved how green and lush it was!

And for all of those out there having (or already had) babies this year. . . this is the year of the Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac. Let me tell you when I was walking around in Singapore I saw pregnant women EVERY where! I really couldn't believe it. Talk about thinking "There must be something in the water!!" It wasn't until we went to dinner with Jeff's coworkers and they explained that this is the year of the Dragon. The Dragon is a symbol of good fortune, so a lot of couples planned to get pregnant this year. They told us that the classes in school will be quite bigger for this group. So great timing for all of you with new additions to your family this year!!