Today was a bit of a special day as it was mine and H’s 17th anniversary! Seems like just yesterday we were backpacking thru the Snowy River.

We were relieved to get to our bikes this morning and to see that they were still there.

We got them back to the shop after a short ride around (it was a very short ride since the bike seats definitely left their “mark” and our booties were a bit sore!

We got breakfast and decided to hop on a boat ride around the canals. It was a beautiful day out so we felt obligated to get one without a roof. It was a bonus that it had a bar on board!

Family selfie from the boat.

View of an old church from the boat.

7 bridges are in a row. A couple of times we had to completely lay down because the area under the bridge was very low.

The boat ride ended in the red light district. Cat saw a lot of people eating french fries and decided she was hungry too!

The Bulldog was the very first coffee shop to legally sell marijuanna. We obviously couldn’t go in but it was fun to people watch from the outside.

Funny story…we thought we had bi-passed all of the “windows” in the Red Light District without Cat seeing them.  We turned the corner and there were 3 empty windows so we didn’t think anything of it when all of a sudden 3 girls jumped out at us from behind the curtain and started dancing at the 3 guys walking in front of us.

It happened so fast! We just covered cats eyes and kept walking. She said “Mom….I think those girls were taking a shower by the window…but they were wearing their bathing suits so it was ok!”

We saw a bronze marker next to a church. We walked over and found this. In Brussells we found the conch shell. In Amsterdam there is “street art”.

As I had mentioned, there were tons and tons of bikes!

Check out this parking garage for bikes next to the Central Station.

We decided to hop on a tram to venture out of town a bit to see what we would find. It actually broke down near the Flower Market so we decided to explore instead. Talk about a tourist trap.

This is what the majority of the booths looked like:

(Cheap gimmicks and souvineer shops.)

We did come across 2-3 stands that had flowers that were pretty.

We were walking around the canals on our way to dinner and came across some young opera singers from 50 different countries singing the choral section of the last movement of Beethoven’s Symphoney No 9. (The Choral) Words are from Shiller’s poem “Ode to Joy”. It was such a scene. The choir standing against the hotel on the other side of the canal, the voices echoing off of the surrounding buildings, the sunlight reflecting off of the rippling water, the boats moving through the landscape…it felt a bit like it belonged in a movie. 

For dinner we decided to go back to the restaurant we got lunch from yesterday. It’s called Frenzi and was a small, family run restaurant that was amazing. I had a delicious mozzarella, tomato, prosciutto and Pesto salad, H had seafood risotto  and Cat had Shrimp croquettes which were balls of shrimp and mash potatoes that were deep fried. So yummy.

I do need to report that there has been a loss in our family on this trip. Cat’s 4th favorite and my favorite bouncy ball (red, white, and blue) wandered away from us and found itself falling off a bridge and sinking down into one of the canals (I would have thought it would have floated!) . We mourned the loss and decided to write a country song to sing about our blues… RIP dear friend. Thank you for the memories! 

We called it an early night as we had to pack and get ready for an early start and long day of traveling.