July 29: Visiting my Great Grandpa's Farm

 We took Grandma with us to Gasselternijveenschemond. That is a very big name for a reallllly small town. We came here because Grandma wanted to see where she was born because she hasn't come back to the Netherlands since she immigrated to Canada. Gasselternijveenschemond is where Grandma was born - my great grand parents, her parents, used to live in the farm house that we visited, but Grandma was born in a smaller house across the street. 

In one of the rooms of the house, there were steps that went up to a bedroom, but then the steps pulled aside to reveal steps to the basement! From the outside, the house looked really big, but from the inside it was not actually that big because the house only took up about 1/4 of the inside space and the rest was a cow barn that was under the same roof. 

The house had a humongous barn, bigger than the house + barn, I think! The barn used to house the work horses for the farm.

There is a fietspad in front of the house, but when my grandpa was little, it used to be a canal!

There were three trees in front of the house when my grandpa was living there and they are still there right now! I thought it was cool to visit the farm because I got to see where my grandma's family lived. 

We got to see 

Gasselternijveenschemond!

These 2 trees were there when my grandma was born there!

This is my great Grandfather and his family before WWI in Gasselternijveenschemond.

The owner of the farm house had a kitty cat and it was adorable. It liked me.

July 26-27: My Grandma Arrives!

 On Wednesday morning two weeks ago, Daddy and I went to the train station and we hopped on a train to get to Schiphol which is where the airport is. We were there to pick up my Grandma, who was coming for a visit! Since Grandma was taking a while to come out to the meeting point at the airport, Daddy got a coffee and I waited at the meeting point until Grandma came. Finally, she came out so I walked with her back to daddy and we hopped on a train back to Amsterdam Centraal. Daddy and I walked our bikes back to the apartment and Grandma walked her suitcase over. 

That afternoon, we went on a verrry long walk to keep Grandma awake to help her get over her jet lag. We found a store called Flying Tiger and we found out that it has good prices and that it has pretty good quality and cool stuff. We saw a hamburger costume that was there and I tried it on, it was actually kind of comfortable! 

We kept walking and we found an ice cream shop. We each got some ice cream - it was actually called Gelato, which is homemade fancy Italian ice cream. I got Oreo flavour, but it just tasted like cookies and cream. Mom got lemon cheese cake, Hendrik got Snickers, and I don't remember what Grandma got but hers tasted the best of all of them!

The next day was Grandma's birthday! We got to have pannekoeken for breakfast and it was super tasty. I went to the store with mom during the day, and we bought a birthday cake for grandma! We thought we were going to have to get some other sort of birthday treat because we hadn't seen any cakes in the stores yet, but I found the cakes and we bought a pink strawberry cake. It was super tasty! Thanks for having a birthday, Grandma!!

On Friday, we walked to a different grocery store called Jumbo and we each got a fresh croissant because there was a deal, buy 3 get 1 free, and there were four of us - mom, me, Hendrik, and Grandma. We also each picked out a pop and I chose a lemon Coca-Cola; Grandma chose a strawberry cheesecake cola; Hendrik got a raspberry Coca-Cola, and mom got a cinnamon cola. Grandma's was the best - AGAIN! She's good at choosing tasty things. 

First day with Grandma!

We went on a walk the day Grandma arrived, and we found this statue!

It was a very sunny day!

We saw some swans in one of the canals we went by (the brown ones are kids)!

We got to have a treat two days later, and we got to choose a pop and we each got a croissant!

YUMMY!!!!

That day was also Grandma's birthday! We got to have pannekoeken for breakfast!

July 23: Köln Cathedral

On Sunday morning, we left our Air bnb in Koblenz and drove to Köln to visit the Köln Cathedral. We went there because my dad really wanted to see it and I'm glad we did go because it was super cool.

We couldn't go inside the church right away because it was Sunday morning and there was a church service happening. First, we looked around in the gift shop and saw some cool stuff. 

Then, we climbed the spire (one of the towers) of the church. The stair case was a very narrow spiral stone staircase with only railings on the outside so when people were coming down, you had to go to the inside of the stairs and it was scary because the steps were even smaller and there was nothing to hold onto! I felt like I might fall down the stairs backwards. When we thought that we had reached the top, we were only three quarters of the way there. But the final staircase was not as scary because it was pretty wide and there a different staircase for up and for down for that part. My mom did not go up all the way to the top because she is afraid of heights. So, when I came down to the 3/4 mark I ended up going back up again with my mom's phone so that I could take pictures for her because she didn't want to go up. 

When the church service ended, then we went down into the church and IT WAS HUGE!!! 

We walked around the church and there was so much pretty stained glass that we got to see. There were also a couple coffins. Blech. Some of the benches in the church were kneeling benches for people to kneel and pray and some of them were built in the 1600's. I sat on a 400 year old bench and it was actually kind of comfortable! The wood was soft and worn down. 

My favourite part of the cathedral was when I was all the way at the top of the spire and there was an amazing view!!!!! 

After we left the Cathedral, we went out for lunch and then we went out for a walk and we found this water playground area and it was fun. I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my pants to play in it, but I got my pants a little wet and almost forgot my sweater at the park when we left!

Then we went back to the car and started the long drive home to Amsterdam. I was pretty tired. 

This was in one of the gift shops and it's actually a song composed in the shape of the Köln cathedral. 

 

This was when we had to go inside because it started raning! 

This was outside the front doors!

This was outside our AirBnB

This one is nice!

I'm the highest you can go in one of the spires!

I like the stained glass!

Check out those ceilings!

That is the floor!

We are in front of the Köln Cathedral.

July 22: Three German Castles!

 On Saturday morning, we got up pretty early, around 8am, had breakfast, and went to find some castles. My dad chose three castles for us to visit. 

The first castle took us about 45 minutes to get to by car. We drove through a lot of foresty areas before we got to the zig-zag bits in front of the castle. Some of the ziggy-zaggy bits were almost u-turns! My mom thought it was a little scary, but I thought it was fuuun!! 

The best part of the drive was when we finally saw the castle on the hill (and another fun part was when there was no speed limit and my dad zooooomed down the road!). The castle looked so cool!! This was the first castle I had ever seen in real life and I thought that castles would be bigger and grander, but it it was still cool.

The first castle was called Castle Thurant. It was super old and had some nice gardens and places to sit and enjoy the view. The weirdest part of it was in one of the towers there was a metal door on the floor leading to the dungeon and there was a sign pointing to it saying Real Human Bones. We could see them from where we were standing. Apparently the owners of the castle didn't want to disturb the resting place of the bones. 

The spot where this castle was built has been used for castles for a very long time and there are some really, really old castle ruins underneath the bits you can see in the pictures, and those parts are also super old. Some of it was rebuilt after WWII. 

The view of Castle Thurant, the first castle we went to

The view from inside Castle Thurant.

Me next to the castle!

A cannon!

I like this view of the castle ruins.

Hendrik and Dad looking around.

Real human bones!

Poor Daddy!

From one of the towers!

Help me!

Look how pretty it is!

On our way to the second castle, we saw this sign in a parking garage. It means Exit. 

Look at the street sign!

We didn't get a picture of the outside of the second castle. I forget what this castle was called. It was my second favourite castle because I loved the gardens. They were so pretty and lively and they had such a beautiful view of the Rhine river. 

We could only go inside about one third of this castle and when we went inside, we were not allowed to take any pictures at all and we had to wear huge slippers over our shoes so that we would not damage the floors because everything was super old. 

I'm so high up!

Looking good, Mom and Dad!

It's a dragon-drainage pipe! 

This is a beautiful view of the gardens!

Nice gardens, eh?

The third castle of the day was my favourite. It was called Castle Marksburg. We got a guided english tour around this castle and it was very old and people actually still live in parts of it which I did not know before. 

When there were servants in the castle, they all lived in the kitchen together and just slept on the floors. A lot of different rulers owned this castle throughout the centuries and some of them owned it twice. Most of them had to sell it because they didn't have enough money to run it. 

In the bedroom there is a very small bed because people back then sat up sleeping because they thought that if they laid down while sleeping they would die so they sat up to sleep. I don't know how you would do that because I need to lay down to sleep. 

From the castle walls, you can see the whole village and Rhine river valley. Anyone who took their boat down the Rhine in that area would have to pay a toll to the people who ruled from the castle. 

I most enjoyed the dining room because there was one funny part. There is a bathroom that is really close to the dining table and you had to keep the door to the bathroom open while you were using the bathroom because it was polite to stay a part of the dinner conversation while you were going to the bathroom. I think that this is really weird and might have been a bit stinky for the people eating dinner!!

In the armor room, there were a whole bunch of suits of armor and in one of the pictures down below, the Roman outfit was my favourite because it has a mini skirt hahah!!

We learned in the dungeon that if you did something bad, you had to wear a mask that showed what you did and it had a weight attatched to it so that it pulled your head down and you would would literally be hanging your head in shame. Everyone would laugh at you and stare at you and throw rotten food at you. We also learned that they didn't really torture people with the torture equipment that they had in the dungeon but it was there to scare them so that they would confess right away. There was a really large painting on the wall that showed how the torture items worked so that people would get really scared! 

After we walked through the castle, Hendrik and I each got to choose an ijs treat from the freezer in the restaurant. Mom got a radler and dad got a beer. I got an oreo ice cream bar. 

There were a couple more castles in the area but we didn't go to them because we ran out of time and we were getting dappled and drowsy and ready to eat dinner! 

This chess board was in on the kitchen table!

The armor had it's own room!

The kitchen stove-area

The beds back then were so small!

Watch out! I have a sword!

Multiple sets of armor include: this one,

This one,

And this one (My fav).

Heading to Germany July 21-22

 On our first weekend trip of the summer, we went to Koblenz in Germany. My dad rented a car so we could drive to Germany instead of taking a train or a bus. 

On the way to Germany, we stopped at the Groesbeek War Memorial to have lunch and look around. This is a cemetery just for Canadians who died fighting Germany in WWII. There were a LOT of graves and most of the soldiers who died were not very old. It was pretty sad. I usually don't like going to graveyards because I don't like the feeling of walking on dead bodies, it gives me the shivers. But I think it was important to see. 

When we got to Koblenz, we went straight to the Air BnB. I was surprised by all of the hills in the town because in Amsterdam and in Holland there are very few hills. There were also so many multicoloured houses! There was pink and yellow and blue and black. 

The house that we stayed in was yellow and we got the top floor because the buildings in Koblenz were very tall. I liked having the top floor because we could see all over the place and we even had a rooftop porch to sit on and look over the city! 

We went out for a late dinner at a beer hall. We had to walk to the beer hall, but it wasn't that bad because I had a LOT of energy from sitting in the car for 5 hours. For dinner, I had chicken nuggets and fries and an Afri-cola! My chicky nuggies were super super super super good!!  

On Saturday, we visited THREE castles in the area. But you'll have to wait for my next blog post to read about them!

Walking to the monument 

Big monument

I like this wreath, I think it's cool that Germany now sends wreaths to the Canadian soldiers, too, even though they were fighting against each other.

Describing what the Groesbeek war memorial is

This is a good view of the graves in this one.

This is also a good view.

The war memorial is from all the Canadians that died while fighting against Germany.

It's nice that the Germans are remembering as well.

Most of the people that died were usually from the age of 18-37.

The Dutch people are very thankful to the Canadians.

We arrived in Koblenz!

The veiw from our AirBNB 

Reading next to the window.

On our way into Germany we saw a molen!

We got to go out for dinner on our first night in Koblenz.

We went to a German beer hall and I got my first German Chicken Nuggets!! They were so good!

This is the outside of the beer hall.

Saturday morning porch time!