Santorini and Connor's birthday!!

Connor and I just got back from a trip to Greece! The only bad part was that we spent 21 hours travelling on Friday, Connor's 24th birthday. But we spent the weekend on the island of Santorini and the best part was being able to see his sister Emily! In case you were wondering, Santorini is here:

Connor enjoying airport cake!

Greece is known for their 200 beautiful islands and we were so lucky to be able to experience them for ourselves. Unfortunately, we went during their off season. Since Greece's primary industry is tourism, when there's no one visiting the islands, they sort of shut down. There weren't many places that were open, including restaurants, public transportation and activities, but we made the most of it. We stayed in Fira, the main town on the island, but visited Akrotiri on the Southern part of the island to see the Red Beach. Because of all the volcanoes in the area, the sand and surrounding area have a red tint to them.

After the beach, we went to the Northern part of the island to the town of Oia, which is probably the more famous part of Santorini. This is where you can find the white homes with the blue roofs and the most beautiful sunset. Unfortunately, you couldn't find many open businesses or restaurants so we didn't stay too long.

New Years Eve

On New Years Eve day, we met up with the cousins again at the Rijksmuseum (pronounced Rike museum). The building itself is a like a work of art! It was founded in 1808, but just 2 years ago they finished a 10 year and €375 million renovation and it's amazing! Connor and I bought a card for €60 that lets us into 45 museums for free and thank God we did because it's going to take a lot of visits to be able to see everything there is to see there. I completely understand why this is the most visited place in Amsterdam! Because I don't want to be super boring and because I know nothing about art, I'll only post a few pictures.

Yes, we did the typical touristy pose in front of the I Amsterdam sign, but it was super busy so this was the closest we got. And yes I'm wearing my glasses because someone made me stay up until 4:30 in the morning watching Kobe's last game against the Celtics...

This is one of Van Gogh's famous self portraits that he did in 1887.  Seeing it in person reminded me of the first NFL game I went to when I was younger; you watch the game on TV and the stadium looks huge and the players are giant and Tom Brady is God-like and then you see it in person and the field is the exact same size as the high school field  and the players are just normal people (except Tom because he's gorgeous). Seeing this in person, it looked so small, just a regular size canvas. But the portrait being small didn't detract from the experience; on the contrary it kind of humanized Van Gogh for me. 

Rembrandt's The Night Watch, or De Nachtwacht was the complete opposite; it was huge!! The canvas took up the entire wall! And supposedly in 1715 they cut off 20% of it to help make it fit better. I can't imagine it being any bigger! I also found myself getting distracted trying to imagine how someone would paint something of this magnitude. You'd have to use a ladder or something, but I kept thinking how frustrating it would be if you stepped back and noticed something you wanted to change in the top corner and how annoying it would be to have to get the ladder back out and have to go fix it.

From there we went to another museum, Our Lord in the Attic, or Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder, which is a 17th century canal house, turned house church. In the 1600s, it was illegal for Catholics to worship publicly so clandestine churches like this popped up in a few places. So when I first heard about this I was thinking yeah okay whatever people got together and prayed in some old attic why is this a museum? No Lauren you're wrong! This place was so cool! The tour starts off by going around the well preserved 17th century house and then leads to the attic. It was a self guided audio tour where they gave this hand held thing that looked kinda like a cell phone and when you walked into different rooms, you held it up to displays in each and then commentary would start playing about what you were seeing.

If you look in the back of the kitchen you can see Danny and he's modeling the audio tour gadget thingy!

The box beds where people slept are tiny! A Connor for scale

View from inside. It looked just like any other house on the street so you would never know the church was there. 

Nativity 

view from above the church

*note the fire extinguisher is not part of the original church,but please don't let it extinguish your impression of complete immersion into the 17th century

The back of the church and the organ from below

The altar

Confessional (I think kneeling on those hard piece of wood would be penance enough!)

Baptismal font (I think their babies were smaller back then)

Priest's vestments

they made us wear these booties to protect the floors

Everything in Amsterdam has been amazing so far that I was starting to think it was too good to be true. Until New Years Eve...Amsterdam I've found your flaw! Fireworks are illegal in the Netherlands expect for the days leading up to NYE and then there aren't any laws about lighting them. It was fun at first seeing the fireworks going off over the canals the nights leading up to it, but then it got dangerous. People will light them off in the middle of a crowded street or inside buildings! People dropped fire crackers from second story windows right on the sidewalk where we were walking. The night club we went to had lit sparklers coming out of champagne bottles in the middle of the dance floor and I'm shocked no one's hair caught on fire! We still had a lot of fun though, especially since we didn't die! Here's a selfie for proof...

We hope everyone at home is having a great 2016 so far! Happy New Year! we love and miss you all!

Hey Look! People We Know!

 Last week, we were so excited because Connor's Aunt Mary and cousins Danny and Taylor were in Amsterdam! It was so nice to see familiar faces for the first time in a few weeks!

We took them to an outdoor market near our apartment and then to the Nemo Science Center on Tuesday. But, unfortunately, we didn't realize that there was a class trip visiting Nemo and it was crazy packed. I don't think it would've been okay for me to elbow an 8 year old out of the way to try out some of the experiments, but it was still really cool! It's 5 floors of different kid-friendly science demonstrations. And the best part is that outside the top floor, there's a cafe and observation area that offers an amazing view of the city. We were so lucky because we got to the top right at sunset!

On Wednesday, we met up with the cousins again for lunch and to check out the floating tulip market. It was right on the water and had stands that went on for a few blocks. It was busy even when the tulips aren't in season so I can't imagine what it would be like in April! I know my picture looks a little dreary, but once you were inside there were so many flowers and bulbs you would've thought it was the middle of spring!

From there we went to the Heineken Brewery! As my friends can attest, I'm not much of a beer drinker so I don't really know what I'm talking about when people bring up ale, IPAs, or other kinds of mumbo jumbo. But I LOVED visiting Heineken! The only brewery I've ever been to is Harpoon in Boston where you get the tour and then 15 minute tasting so that was more or less what I was expecting, but I couldn't have been more wrong. 

Someone was there to explain the mumbo jumbo and ingredients that go into making the beer

Next you walked into a huge room which used to be the brewery

I thought the place reeked because of the hops...nope! It was the Clydesdale! 

Their stables were still decorated for Christmas

Two of the old carts the horses used to pull

 After this, they had an interactive movie where they "brew you" into the beer. It was a really fun way of learning about the process and even the kids on the tour enjoyed it. After this, they had this wicked cool area with games and other fun activities. We learned that Mary is an expert and can pour the perfect beer and then took some embarrassing selfies! They also had an area dedicated to the rugby and soccer (I refuse to call it "futbol") that they own with a hall of fame and digital games you could play.

Amsterdam Light Festival

Hi everyone, it's been a while since we gave you all an update, we've been busy!  We have a ton of pictures so I'm going to break it into a couple different posts.  We took another canal tour two days before Christmas at night where we got to see the light displays featured in the Amsterdam Light Festival.  We had pictures of some of the displays in our last canal tour post but they look much nicer lit up!

 

 The buckets hanging from the sculpture would drop and fill with water and then spin around like a carousel. 

 Here is the bridge from Diamonds are Forever lit up at night.

 We found the statue of liberty's relatives.

  

The lights here are tied onto trees on either side of the canal, must have been a little tricky setting up.

Here is a guy jumping over the bridge!

On New Years Day we went out on the canal again on a boat that has been tied up at the apartment with a friend of the woman renting us our apartment.  We had a great time and we got to get a closer look at some of the lights!

 It's a little bit hard to see but there are 9 (I think 9) bridges lined up as you pass under them from this angle.

We had a great time seeing all of the lights, it was a good way to get into the Christmas spirit!