The Netherlands

The impressions I took away from the Netherlands: water everywhere, bikes everywhere, very nice people who all speak English, and dang expensive.

Really, as you travel around, you get the impression that the whole country is just one good thunderstorm away from going completely underwater. I think that's pretty much the history of Holland. The canals that run along the streets are just a few inches below the level of the street. It certainly makes parallel parking a little more interesting; one wrong move and your car is going in the water.

And these people are biking maniacs. The Swiss bike a lot compared to the Americans, but the bikes here just share the road with the cars and the cars work around the bikes. In Holland, there are dedicated bike trails everywhere, and there's plenty of space to park your bike.

To get there, we drove through France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. We stayed at a hotel about twenty miles outside of Amsterdam in a city called Leiden. It was a great place for the kids. It had a pool and a pretty good play area for the kids, so it worked out well. And, by sheer dumb coincidence, the English-speaking branch of our church for the Amsterdam area met just down the street from our hotel. That was pretty handy.

One day was devoted entirely to visiting the Keukenhof, a large flower garden with all sorts of tulips and other flowers. It was a little early in the season, so not everything was blooming yet, but it was still a pretty spectacular sight.

We only spent one day in Amsterdam. We spent three or four hours at the Van Gogh Museum (didn't take any pictures), went for a canal cruise, and visited the Anne Frank house. It was raining, so the only pictures we could get on the cruise were through the glass, but here are a couple.

Our last day there, we visited Zaanse Shans, a conservation area and museum that depicts what life was like for the Dutch living in the area. It has several functioning windmills and other cool attractions. (The picture of Lindsey in front of the canal looks photo shopped, but it's real. You can tell that it was quite windy that day. Makes sense, right? One needs wind to get much use out of windmills.)

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And, as I mentioned before, it was expensive. Our experience in Prague had gotten me used to cheap vacations, but holy cow, it's pricey in the Netherlands. For example, our family had a nice buffet at our hotel in Prague for $40. At our hotel in Leiden, a slightly nicer buffet dinner cost us $100. Ouch! I thought I was pretty much over sticker shock in Switzerland, but the Netherlands still got me.

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All in all, though, it was a good trip. The weather was mostly cooperative, the kids had fun, and we got to see some things we'd wanted to see for a long time. Next up for family vacation spots: Provo and Cedar Hills.