July 2018

Mike and kids arrived a Schiphol Airport with Milo and Mia in tow and we could not be more excited to be reunited! I have to hand it to Mike. He accomplished the last of the packing, drove 2 days from Phoenix to San Francisco , boarded himself, two girls, and two large dogs who have never flown, on plane to Amsterdam.

I took two weeks for summer holiday, which seemed incredibly decadent, and we traveled around The Netherlands on our own European Vacation.

The original plan had been follow a similar itinerary to the one Reid and I had taken down to Basel.

Unfortunately, a day after arriving, Mia went into full heat. There was no way to travel with them at that point. So, the air bnb’s were canceled and we settled on day trips.

First stop… Amsterdam. We found a couple of deals on a Canal Ride, Heineken tour and Rijksmuseum combo. Which, in retrospect is crazy. The museum itself could be one day. But, the weather was quite grand. We road the train and bus in from Loosdrecht and just made the canal tour, hopping on literally as they were pulling away. Because we were late, we hadn’t received the earbuds for the guided audio and were about 15 minutes in, feeling very Gil’s before the kids told us there was a whole basket of buds up near the Captain. We sent one of the kids who reluctantly fetched 5 sets and distributed them amongst us. We were feeling great that we were about o get out money’s worth. 10 minutes later, the earbuds lay in a mangled heap at our table after realizing that the audio tour was not living up to our hype. We retreated to the open air on the back deck and just enjoyed the ride.