Unforgettable, In Every Way

The past couple of weeks have been quite exciting.  Todd and I had a great time with Cam and Jamie in Europe.  Not only did we get to travel and experience amazing things together, but Cam popped the question to Jamie, and she said "yes!".  We are so happy and excited for them, and I am delighted that we were there to see it all go down (and celebrate afterwards).   

For the purposes of recapping our time together, however, I'm going to start at the beginning.  You can look forward to the engagement story, complete with photos, in my next post. How's that for a cliffhanger?

So for now, let's go back to almost 2 weeks ago when C and J arrived in Amsterdam.  We spent about 24 hours total in Amsterdam, so we were once again running around like crazy people.

Heading in from the airport. Happy to see my little bro!

Our first stop was breakfast/lunch/brunch.  We went to Pancakes for some traditional Dutch, you guessed it, pancakes.  This place in teeny tiny, so we were very surprised to get a table right away.

The pancakes were delicious and gave us the fuel we needed for the rest of the day.  Even though we did need to reorder our cakes after our server forgot about us.  But I should mention that we did snag some free cappuccinos in the meantime (which is quite shocking for European service). Our second destination was the Heineken Experience, which is the Heineken brewery tour.  The tour goes through the old brewery, so it's neat to see how they did things in the past. Here's some shots from the tour:

The tour itself is interesting, and then they give you 2 beers at the end, which you drink at a cool bar.  We had a good time.  I even got upgraded to an Extra Cold Heineken for being able to name the 4 ingredients in beer.  Beer connoisseur, right here people.

Following the tour we met up with our friend Amanda who also had a friend in town visiting.  The 6 of us had happy hour outside at the Stedelijk Museum, which has lots of outdoor seating:

Can you spot us?

After that, we were feeling hungry, and thought that Indonesian food sounded good.  Todd and I had gone to a great place with my parents that was just around the corner from where we had drinks.  Unfortunately once we arrived there, we noticed that the restaurant didn't have a floor, it was just a hole.  Talk about a major renovation.  So we consulted my handy travel book and found an Ethiopian restaurant that wasn't too far away.  Most of us had never tried Ethiopian before, and it was delicious, but the method of eating was quite unique.  Each person orders a main dish, but everyone receives their side items on one huge giant pancake.  An accompanying pic might help with that description.

Eating is then very fun, because you only use your hands, basically just using your pancake to scoop up meat and veggies.  It was great.  I recommend searching for an Ethiopian place near you!

After dinner, which ended after 10pm, we headed over to the RLD.  In the past, I've only ever gone through the Red Light District before the sun had completely set.  This time, however, it was full on night time.  And boy was it busy!  Mainly with gawking tourists (such as ourselves), but we did see a fair number of closed curtains.  Todd and Cam were brave enough to snap a few pics on the street. 

See what I mean?  This place was packed.  The RLD is always an eye-opening, thought-provoking experience, and after dark it was no exception.  After walking around for long enough, we ended our night with a nightcap at a canal-side cafe.

Another great day in Amsterdam!  This city does not disappoint.  The next morning, C and J headed to the Van Gogh museum, while Todd and I tracked down our free gifts from the Heineken Experience.  For some reason, we had to go to an entirely different location to get our free gift (a bottle opener).  But Todd and I had nothing else to do while waiting for C and J (who were using our museum cards to get in for free), so we made the trek over.  I think C and J enjoyed the museum.

And, finally, here's a last few shots from AMS:

We then hit the road and headed over to get some tulip action.  Some major tulip action at Keukenhof.  As I detailed in a previous post, I had gone to the gardens a few weeks back, but nearly nothing was in bloom outside.  This time it was a different story.  The gardens and fields were in full bloom and absolutely gorgeous.  We had considered not going and heading right back to Eindhoven instead, but I'm so glad we ended up making it there.  It was a definite must-see.  I'll do a photo-dump now of all that color.

This was an odd optical illusion mirror.  How does Todd look in tights?

Pretty great, right?  I'm so glad I got the chance to go back and see it all in full bloom.  Following Keukenhof, we headed home for Eindhoven.  That evening we had another great meal at the Gouden Leeuw, which is one of our favorite spots on the outskirts of Eindhoven.

The Golden Lion

And that leaves us at a good stopping point for today. I'll be back next time with the details of our trip to Espana!  You won't want to miss it. I promise there will be more sun (and sunburn).