One Last Day

This is the last full day of our trip before we head home. We start off by going to breakfast that is provided over at the restaurant. This morning there is a sweet little grandma there running the breakfast. She asks if we want coffee and I ask if the kids can have hot chocolate as I saw that as an option on the menu in our room. She didn’t understand me and brought a bottle of apple juice instead.

Our breakfast is more of the same… hard boiled eggs, meat and cheese platter, plus bread. This place has a small piece of apple cake for each of us too.

We are only a few miles away from the border of the Netherlands, so Nate takes advantage of one last high speed blast (149 mph!) on the autobahn before speed is restricted once again.

We told the kids they could have 30 minutes of screen time for this whole road trip, and they have been saving it, so they use that time now as we only have a two hour long drive today.

We are heading to Amsterdam to get the kids a fresh stroopwafel, but first we need to find some parking and get lunch.

We decide to eat at the Sea Palace, which is a floating Chinese Restaurant close to the Amsterdam Central train station. This is a dim sum restaurant, which means it serves an assortment of small plates and sharable plates of food. We pick several options of things to try including a couple kinds of dumplings which we knew the kids would eat and Siu ab bao that had duck, which would be a first for all of us. I actually liked the Siu ab bao the best. It was a soft fluffy steamed bun filled with roasted duck, cucumber slices, and hoisin sauce.

On the main floor they have robotic waiters that bring trays of food to the table.

We were able to get a seat next to the water

Siu ab bao

When we are done we walk down Damrak which is one of the main avenues that leads from the central train station to the main square in Amsterdam. Along this road are some of the slender traditional Dutch canal houses that reflect off the water of the canal. These houses are very narrow because they historically charged property taxes based on how wide the front of the house was, so the houses would be tall and deep, but very skinny. The narrowest house in Amsterdam was built in 1738, and measures only 6.6’ wide!

Also along Damrak is Stroopperie, a pastry shop that makes fresh stroopwafels, a famous Dutch treat of flat waffle-cookie that they carefully slice in half and fill with a sticky caramel syrup in the middle. They offer original or with toppings, such as Nutella and candy bits. I haven’t been eating most treats when they have dairy on this trip, but today I decide to splurge and take a pill that helps me digest dairy. After they are made we take them across the street to some benches that are in the shade to eat them, as this is the first day of our trip where the sun is out and feeling summer like.

We then head back towards our car, stopping at a souvenir shop and then a grocery store for some light dinner food and a few plane snacks.

Passing by the central train station in Amsterdam on the way to our car

We have to drive across town towards the airport to get to our hotel. As we are looking for it we see that there is a hotel under demolition and I jokingly say “it’s a good thing we aren’t staying there!” but as we drive by we see that the name on that hotel is the name of the hotel we are supposed to be staying at…Uh oh! 

We have to pull over to try to verify our information. Eventually we head back and pull into the parking lot of the hotel that’s next door, and we see  a small sign that says Best Western Plus Amsterdam Airport Hotel with an arrow pointing to a building next door that is also by the mostly demolished building.

Turns out they are doing a major remodel, but are still open. They took down half of the hotel, but there is still a part that is standing and open for business.

After we check in and empty out the car, we bring everything up to our room. Nate and Landon drive and return our rental car, so we don’t have to worry about it in the morning. They are able to take a free shuttle back to our hotel from the airport.

We eat the food we bought for dinner, and play a couple rounds of Phase 10 Go. I make sure our bags are ready to go for the morning, and we head to bed.

We bought some Appelflappen for the kids to try, which is like an apple turnover.

In the morning we take the free shuttle to the airport. We get there almost 3 hours before our flight as we have had issues at the Amsterdam airport before. We do have some issue getting the kiosk to pull up our information so we can tag our bag, but an attendant comes and helps us and we are soon on our way.

I'm not really sure what this is about....

Thankfully with a full night sleep in us we don’t need to be trying to sleep on the plane, so this should help Kailey who often doesn’t feel well on long flights. My plane snacks of cinnamon raisin bagels come in handy when she doesn’t want to eat the food they are serving.

We have a couple hours in Minnesota where we have to go through customs. Just before we are supposed to get on our plane a thunderstorm comes over the area and our plane is delayed by about 45 minutes.

We eventually get on our flight home to Phoenix and land just before a haboob hits, we drive through it just before we get to our house.

I’m thankful for this amazing adventure we had, but looking forward to sleeping in my own bed!