Today was a long, but really fun day. After catching the bus into downtown, we walked the Main Street of Amsterdam: Damrak. It was full of souvenir shops, fast food joints and clothing stores, along with the two best ideas I’ve ever seen. Little stores full of vending machines they put cheap put freshly made food into and places where you can buy a paper cone full of fresh french fries covered in a sauce of your choosing. So cool.

We then boarded our bus for a 5 and a half hour tour of some iconic, extremely tourist-y areas. They first took us to a small – well, they called it a village, but nobody lived there and it was just tourist stores. But along the bank of the canal were four or five actual windmills. Now, I’d love to show you pictures, but the internet today is even worse than yesterday, which I didn’t realize was possible. The windmills were are black and green with white and orange sails on the arms. They were big too. Easily three stories, not including the spinning arms. The one we climbed up the inside of was actually in use, grinding powder for paint pigments. After a swing through the handmade chocolate shop, we attempted a family selfie in front of the windmills and got back on the bus.


We were dropped off in a costal town and taken to a cheese factory, where they told us how they make cheese. But as we’ve all been to Tilamook more times than we can count, it was a little boring. Afterwards they let us raid the adjacent cheese store (as I’m eating some right now, I can tell you that it is very good) and then set us loose on the road in front of the bay to find ourselves dinner and do a little shopping. None of us wanted to sit down in a restaurant, so we hit the street food again. While mom and Michael got regular dinner food, me and dad decided we weren’t hungry enough for that and wandered over to a waffle stand. All I’m going to say is yum.

Then we got on a ferry and trundled across the bay to the quaintest of quaint sea-side villages to ever exist. It was about 6:30 and all the shops were closed. In order to get to our destination, we had to walk through narrow brick streets between buildings, over canals, past several backyards, and one old man who leaned out his door with a cigar to watch the tourists wander past. As soon as the houses ended, the fields began- full of sheep and cows.

After making our way through the village, we entered the traditional wooden shoe factory. A worker demonstrated how they make clogs with a monologue full of bad jokes, then invited us to try on sample clogs in all their sizes to see what fit. In wooden shoe sizes, my feet are less than half the size of my dad’s, even though we aren’t nearly that far apart in normal shoes. We didn’t buy any though, as one pair for the boys would fill up a backpack on their own.

And then the bus took us back, talking about how they have to constantly drain the land to keep it from turning back into marshes and teaching us Dutch which sort of sounds like a cat throwing up (no offense if any Dutch people are reading this for some reason…)

All in all a very intensely tourist oriented day.

Every day I appreciate being short even more. I don’t bang my head on any of the “low” ceilings, I can sit in seats without banging my knees on the wall/seat/person in front of me (even though my feet don’t entirely hit the floor…)
But it does make life easier.

The rest of our time in Amsterdam will be fairly laid back. Actually, the rest of our trip will be. We’re not intense travelers. We take the hop on hop off bus in Amsterdam tomorrow, which has only one loop instead of four and is an hour long as opposed to two hours if traffic is decent. We’ll be stopping by the Van Gogh museum, Heineken store, and diamond something or other. Great word choice, I know.

… I’ll let myself out. Goodnight.

Well, here we are. Second city. We left our apartment at 10 this morning, waded through Paris traffic, and went through the pleasantly quick and streamlined Paris security (didn’t even have to take our shoes off- yay!) After sitting around for a couple hours, we hopped onto a small plane and flew the grueling 40 minute flight to Amsterdam.

First impressions? It looks a lot more like a regular city than the world’s biggest historical monument. Apart from a giant windmill a half-mile away, the part of Amsterdam we’re staying in is very regular looking.

We have seen a couple hundred bicycles in the last few hours, but that’s to be expected here.

Unlike Paris, everyone seems much more relaxed. People wear jeans and t-shirts instead of suits and dresses. There are children and families around: we saw no one but single or couples of adults outside of tourist areas in Paris. We haven’t been downtown yet, so it will be interesting to see if that holds.

Also unlike Paris, we’re staying quite a ways from anything. And we’re on a houseboat!

This little thing is even quirkier than the last place. The internet is slower, the oven looks like a microwave, there’s no dishwasher, the front door doesn’t really close, and the promised washing machine and hairdryer are nowhere to be found. And since the washing machine at the Paris apartment was broken, we did a little washing in the kitchen sink and hanging on the deck.

But it’s still pretty nice. Apparently five ducks live on the deck outside and they’re talking away right now. The canal is nice, and there’s an actual restaurant down the road that doesn’t expect you to hang around for two hours and served hamburgers. Which means dad ordered a whole fish: I’ll get him to upload the picture of it later.

Le fish. It had eyes and everything.

Did I ever mention that the bathroom in Paris had a tub with no blocker and a hand-held shower thing at the wrong end? Well… We have a regular shower now, and that’s super exciting.

Also, because the internet is so slow, no pictures of the houseboat tonight. We’ll look for an internet cafe tomorrow, but unless we’re successful… It might be a long week of reading my random ramblings instead of looking at pretty pictures.

Tomorrow we’re taking a bus tour of the countryside. Goodnight!

Before you read: No pictures tonight, even though the text says there should be. I don’t know if you noticed, but yesterday’s post went up around midnight your time instead of the middle of the afternoon. That’s because I gave up fighting the website/iPad/internet at 1 am (our time) and went to sleep. I’m not really feeling up to that tonight. So when we get better internet I’ll let you know about pictures, but until then, use your imagination 😉

Edit: Pictures now up! You may have to tilt your head though.

So we didn’t actually go to the Louvre today. Apparently it’s closed on Tuesdays. Instead, we spent most of the day on other bus lines, just enjoying the beautiful city. Turns our that in the modern parts of Paris, there’s a stadium with grass-covered walls and a library made out of four skyscrapers.
But really the highlight of the day was the inside of the Notre Dame. It was truly spectacular. I’ll spare you the hundred-and-something photos I took in there (sorry architecture friends), but here’s a few.

I can’t say enough about how beautiful that cathedral is. Every inch is decorated with something old and amazing for the tools of the time — they started about 1200 AD and didn’t finish for a hundred and fifty years. As we were walking around, an all girl’s choir started singing and oh man the acoustics in that place. Plus their amazing voices. They really did sound like angels.

We did swing through a massive (two buildings, seven stories each) department store that was just full of every super expensive store ever. I won’t bore you with the names, but most of the items didn’t have price tags.

Here’s some pretty buildings from around Paris-

But we didn’t do quite so much today. Had a nice dinner out, but nobody got anything crazy. Tomorrow the Louvre!

Bonus angel comforting a beheaded saint-

I’m writing this while watching the sun set behind the cathedral and listening to some drunk guy singing in Italian on the street below. It’s a very strange combination.

Today was a bus day. After breakfast, we walked over to the Louvre and caught a tour bus. They handed out cheap little headphones to plug into boxes beside our seats. Then you chose your language from one of eight. English (represented with a British flag which threw me for a second), French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, German, and what we think was Arabic. We spent the next few hours being driven through the crazy traffic of Paris, seeing the main sights, and completely losing track of all the dates of when things were built, added onto, commissioned by this king or that one,  built by which architect, burned down, moved, or changed into a palace, museum, or prison.

I said it before, but I’ll say it again. The amount of history here is overwhelming.

We drove past Notre Dame (which we went back to- more later), that bridge covered in padlocks , a lot of ancient palaces-turned-something else, the big university, the Concorde where Marie Antoinette was beheaded (along with a bunch of other people) and up the Champs Elysees to the Arc d’Triumph. The Champs Elysees is a huge street lined with the highest of the highest end stores. Louis Vuitton, Mercedes Benz, Cartier, Tiffany, dozens of Parisian couture stores, and a McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds- right smack in the middle of it all.

At the end of the road was the famous Arc d’Triumph-

Pictures don’t convey the scale of it. From the other end of the road, you could see it over the tops of all the 5-6 story buildings. People have flown planes through the middle of it. And the carvings on it are spectacular. Intricately carved people fight battles in scenes the size of movie theater screens.

The traffic around it is nothing like I’ve ever seen before either. Busses cut through the cars and scooters like giant whales in an ocean. Everyone just lets them go where they need to go. The cars drift in whatever direction they need to go, weaving across each other’s paths in some places. And the scooters just dart wherever, making up their path as they go along. It’s a scary-looking hierarchy but amidst the toot tooting of horns, it seems to work. Another fun thing was the Ferraris and Lamborghinis parked everywhere with “Drive Me!” plastered on their sides. Tempting, but not in the crowded center of Paris.

Oh, and we also saw this slightly famous thing-

From the other side of the city, it’s like “Oh, there it is. Doesn’t look any bigger than the Space Needle.” From the bus nearby, it looks pretty big. But standing underneath it….

It’s massive. Huge. Pick your adjective. I would guess that about 12,000 people could stand underneath it, if they squished together a little.

But in all honesty, I was more impressed with Notre Dame. That thing is big and beautiful beyond belief.

I’ve never seen such amazing architecture. Every single bit of that building is made intricately. In some places it looks as delicate as a butterfly wing while others are adorned with massive gargoyles and statues of saints. We’re actually going to go inside it tomorrow to ogle at the stained glass and ornamentation in there, which we’re all really excited about.

We’re also going into the Louvre tomorrow-

That building is both the biggest and the richest art museum in the world. It stretches for three or four city blocks long and a least two across.

One the biggest things that struck me today (beside the beauty of everything) was the diversity. So many cultures, races, styles… Oregon really is an isolated part of the world. I couldn’t tell you how many different languages I heard today. I really enjoyed seeing all the different people staring at the same beautiful things. There’s probably a deeper meaning there but this isn’t English class and I’m too tired. Despite all the diversity, everyone was really kind about bumping into each other, avoiding each other’s photos, and just being generally cheerful. It was awesome.

A few random bits:

Sentence I Never Thought I’d Say: “No! I’m not going to walk to Notre Dame. I will walk to the Louvre though.”

(Our apartment is only a few blocks away)

Here’s a little bit more of our apartment, by the way. These beams are at least a hundred years old-

And this is our hilariously small kitchen with a six foot tall dad for reference-

All the doorways here are about six feet, one inch tall too. Never have I been more glad to be short. I can reach all the shelves too!

Mom’s Note: All the cathedrals we’ve seen so far are built with carved stone as opposed to Italian architecture, where everything’s built with colorful mosaics and intricate facades.

Mom’s Note 2: The cheese is delicious.

I’ve been working on this for way too long now. But before I go, here’s a picture of the cathedral all lit up now that it’s well and truly dark-

Bye!

Paris certainly lives up to its reputation. Around the airport and outskirts of the city, it looks like just any other city. Freeways, concrete buildings, billboards everywhere. But once you get into the center… Oh man.

But before I rave about the architecture and food, let me back up for just a minute.

Our two flights — one to Minneapolis and second to Paris — went about as well as you can expect when you spend 11 hours on full airplanes. They left and arrived on time, the hostesses spoke French and English, and the food was surprisingly good… and surprisingly familiar.

We had a chauffeur pick us up from the airport and drive us to our apartment, which was really easy and convenient.

But back to Paris itself. I haven’t had a chance to really get pictures of it, but every single building has wrought iron across the windows and carvings everywhere. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the architectural terms to describe anything, but needless to say it’s beautiful.

Here’s a building we saw on our way back from dinner-

And here’s the amazing view out our 4th floor apartment window-

Yes, that’s a cathedral. From the 1500’s. Wasn’t even mentioned in the information we got about the place. And the dome is where people went to sell grain in the late 1800’s. The stairs we climb up to get here are stone and worn down unevenly. They have hooks driven into them to hold rods which hold carpet in place. Everything here has so much history. Anything build after the 1800’s looks strangely out of place.

The single meal we’ve had here was amazing. Most of us jumped straight into the strange new food and were not disappointed. Dad’s appetizer was some sort of salad guacamole with raw salmon and mine was goat cheese on toast with honey. And then we ordered rabbit, calf head, and duck. Here’s the rabbit-

Hey, when in Rome. Or Paris. It was all delicious. There was some distinct cultural differences though. We spent two hours at dinner, even though most of it was just waiting. And that was the norm. Everyone just sat and talked, ordering tea or coffee when they were done eating and sitting around for another half hour. Because of that, you have to ask the waiter to bring your check- they don’t just bring it when you’re done eating like in America. We realized that after maybe half an hour.

We’ve only been here ten hours, but Paris has been amazing so far. Tomorrow we have hop on, hop off bus passes, so we’ll see most of the main sights. Look for those pictures tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning our plane leaves for our five weeks abroad. None of us can quite believe it. This trip has been years in the making, and to have it actually happen is really strange. However, we’re all very excited. Who wouldn’t be?

The last two weeks have been a bit chaotic as we gathered together everything we needed to spend five week abroad. Only one of our phones is new enough to work overseas, so after opening that one up to global calling, we bought a burn phone so we can keep in touch with each other. We’ve got phones full of music and backpacks full of books. We have a handful of SD cards for our cameras and about three handfuls of batteries. We notified the bank that we were traveling internationally so they wouldn’t cry “Fraud!” and lock our cards, traded dollars for euros, made sure everyone had enough clothes, travel-sized bathroom supplies, power adapters, plug adapters, appropriate walking shoes, and luggage tags. For the last two days, we’ve been cramming everything into four carry-on suitcases and a four backpacks.

We’ve also spent a lot of time cleaning the house for our house-sitters and cataloguing everything they need to do to take care of the small zoo of animals we have.

Add in a surprise root canal and a minor horse injury you have our last two weeks.

Fortunately, with 18 hours until our flight leaves, everything is ready to go. There won’t be a post tomorrow night as we’ll still be on a plane, but we’ll see you in Paris on Sunday!

Au revoir!

Hello!

I should probably put it out there that I’ve never blogged before, so you’ll have to bear with me. Nevertheless, welcome to my travel blog! I’ll be posting daily while me and my family (hang on, we’ll get to them) are in Europe for five weeks starting June 21st. We’ll be in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Sälen (in Sweden) and London.

Convenient map minus London! Google maps wouldn’t let me show the route in flights (which we will be doing because, fun fact, it’s cheaper than driving or taking the train) and adding London into the driving route takes you back through Amsterdam and stuff. Long story short: it looked weird. And everyone knows where London is.

Here is my family, whom I will probably just refer to as “we” most of the time. Unfortunately, we haven’t taken a family photo recently, so there will be a couple pictures.

Apparently my parents don’t take nice photos together very often, since this one from a couple years ago was the most recent one I could find. In case it wasn’t obvious, my mom is on the left and my dad is on the right.

Fortunately, my parents take pictures of us more frequently – this one is from last week. The tall, blonde boy on the left is my little brother Michael and I (Maggie) am the short, blonde one on the right.

Now that you know who all is going on the trip, let me give you a quick rundown of what we’ve done so far.

Not much.

Well, all of our rooms, planes, and several of our passes/ tours are booked, but in terms of packing, we haven’t started.

In March, Michael and I applied to have our passports renewed and oh boy, wasn’t that fun. Michael got his within a month, but I only got mine a week ago. A couple weeks after Michael got his passport and papers back, I got a letter listing all the things that could possibly be wrong with my passport application. After taking with our city hall, they decided the only thing that could actually be wrong was the photo, so they re-took it for me and sent it in again. About a week later, we got another letter – the exact same letter – telling us that something (who knows what) was wrong. After much frustration and long hold times, my mom talked to someone who said that, even though their website stated that you didn’t need parental permission to apply for a passport if you were over 16, the age was in fact 18. So we filled out all the appropriate paperwork and sent it back in to them. Three days after I turned 18, my passport started being processed for the third time, over three weeks after we sent in the final corrections. That was the middle of May, and I received my passport at the beginning of June. As of June 9th, almost exactly three months after we sent in the first application, I have not got my birth certificate or other papers back yet.

Pro travel tips from an 18 year old: renew your passport as early as possible.

But other than that struggle, it’s been fairly smooth sailing. Booking a small apartment in Paris was a bit of an ordeal, but we found a solid place after only a couple flaky owners.

So when I said not much has happened, I guess that was a bit of a lie. The real push begins this week though, now that we’ve survived my high school graduation and Michael’s 8th grade promotion. I’ll make another post before we leave letting you know what we get up to in the next two weeks, but until then, I hope you have a great week and I look forward to sharing our adventures with you!

Maggie