This weekend I went to visit my friend from camp, Nadine, in the Netherlands. She lives just outside the city and I stayed with her family, it was a lot of fun.

Thursday: My flight got into the Amsterdam Airport around 2PM. Nadine met me at the airport and then we took the bus to her house which was about 4 minutes from the bus stop. When we got to her house I just put my stuff down and then she showed me around her town. I had to ride a bike which was quite the experience considering I haven't ridden one in years. Once I was on it was fine but it was higher than I was used to so I had to reteach myself how to get on and off. It was also even more embarrassing since Nadine was going with no hands, texting, putting on her coat and turning around and I was staring straight ahead praying I wouldn't fall. But anway, we walked around the town for a little while and then just hung out and walked around near her house for a while.

Friday: After being locked out of the house for a little while and Nadine's mom coming home with the key we went into Amsterdam. The firsts thing we did was go to the Anne Frank House. The line looked really long but it actually went pretty quickly. The house was very interesting because we could see wheere they lived, hid and guess at what it felt like to be there. Her diary was also there and it made it very real to see that and to also see interviews with Miep Gees and Otto Frank. After the Anne Frank House we had lunch and then went to to Van Gogh Museum. This was really cool because the Colors of the Night Exhibition was there and we saw the Starry Starry Night Painting, which was very impressive to see in person. Then we walked around the city for a while and saw the Red Light District and just the city in general. The Red Light District was very strange and we just walked fast because we were some of the only girls there (besides the prostitutes). On the way back to Nadine's house we had this really good ice cream that was ice cream mixed with whipped cream.

Saturday: In the morning we drove to the Madurdam which is a park with models of the entire Netherlands in miniature. As we were driving there we drove through the Hague and I got to see a ton of the country, which is reallyy beautiful. Madurodam was really cool and I saw the couple places I was in and then the models of a ton of other places. You could also put money in or press a button to make some of the models move, so of course we did this at the candy factory model and it gave us a little Mars bar. After Madurodam we went to Scheveningen (?). This was a town right on the North Sea with a bunch of restaurants. We went to one of them for lunch and then we walked around the beach and I got a picture with my feet in the water which was wicked cool. We also walked on the pier and saw a man bungee jumping. Then we got ice cream and drove back to Nadine's house. That night I went to a volleyball tournament with Nadine's family. It was really fun but I suck at volleyball so I felt kind of bad for my team.

Sunday: We slept in and did a little homework in the morning. Then we got back on the bikes to see all the flowers. The biking went much better this time, I only had one near death experience. Well, maybe two. Nadine lives in Lisserbroek which is right next to Lisse which is famous for the flower gardens and fields. The huge famous garden is there but we didn't go there because it was wicked crowded. Instead we rode around the town and around the fields which were wicked pretty. Then we sat at an outdoor cafe and I tried bittenballen which is a typical Dutch food that has meat in it. There was only a really tiny bit in it though so it doesn't count as me eating meat. Then we went back to her house and hung out for a while until my flight which was supposed to be at 7:30 but was delayed until 8.

This weekend was really fun. It was great weather most of the time which was really lucky.

For Howard: For breakfast we had these chocolate sprinkle things that actually tasted like chocolate and not just sugar on bread which were really good. I also had cookies that were like thing crunchy waffles with some sort of caramel in the middle. Then I tried the bittenballen and Nadine's mom made a strawberry rhubarb thing that was also really good.