Out of This World

Of course, I HAVE to tell you about Saturday's boat ride(s) here in Amsterdam, since that was what we all looked forward to the most. And of all the days, it was the sunniest and warmest! The Universe was smiling!

We started with the most famous cheese shop in Amsterdam, De Kaaskamer, which happens to be just a 10-minute walk from our apartment. So many choices! HOW do you choose? Thankfully, all I did was take the photos and left everything else up to them. Donica, of course, was the one who knew.

At 2 p.m., the boys came in the rental boat to pick us up at the dock a couple blocks away from our apartment on the Lijnbaansgracht.

That's Matt at the helm, who was our chief navigator for the 3-1/2 hours we were on the canals. Oh yes, James, to my left (out of the photo) was often the pilot, of course.

This is an electric boat, BTW, that gets charged up at night and lasts for 12 hours. The engine is underneath the table and is so quiet you can't hear it. What a way to go!

The lucky part of the day, besides the sun, was a rowing competition that we bumped into several times throughout the day. What a fun event to see up close and personal!

You can see how it was a sight to see for those NOT in boats as well. How they squeezed through those tight spots is beyond me.

You really see a different perspective of the canals when you're at ground level, so to speak!

Potty break time! Yup. So you just find a place to stop, climb out, and find your nearest cafe. Which we did. :)

What a lovely time to just BE. Family and friends together.

Amy and Jack (aka Jackie) strike up a pose.

And then it was time to say Good Bye.
A humongous THANK YOU to James and Matt for joining us and facilitating this incredible adventure. What a memory!

As if that wasn't enough, later in the evening, after it got dark and we had eaten dinner, we went down to the Centraal Station area for a night cruise on a tourist boat. Here we're waiting in line with Centraal Station in the background.

With all those windows, it's a great way to see over 100 Amsterdam sights in the course of an hour...many of the same sights we had already seen during the day. That's the Sint Nicolaaskerk (St. Nicholas Church) in the background.

Speaking of Nicholas! While we were on the little boat, Donica's phone rang and Nick (Nicholas' dad) was on the line. He started off by saying what a soccer game (in Atlanta) we had just missed! Nicholas not only kicked his first goal ever ("and it was a hard kick, not just a wimpy dribble!"), which tied up the game 1-1, but at the very end he saved a kick from being scored by the other team! When Amy asked Nicholas how that felt, he said, "It felt like I kicked it out of the world!"

The girls are now safely back in Atlanta after a safe trip home yesterday. But that's exactly what we felt at the end of the day on Saturday after a long weekend. It was a day out of this world, which we will never forget.