Amsterdam {Day 1}

One of my bucket list items was to travel to Europe for a long weekend and what better time than Thanksgiving? We had a few days off and, well, Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Europe. Flights were pretty open and we knew we had to try!

We ended up on a nonstop from Houston on KLM on Wednesday afternoon and arrived before the sun rose on Thursday morning. Daylight hours are only from 8:30-4:30 this time of year.

John and Mallory were due to arrive later that day, so we had time to go to check into our canal house and then walk a block over to the Anne Frank House before they got there. If you want to see this, get there early! We had zero line and minimal people in the house around 9am, but it gets crazy later in the day per John and Mallory who had been before.

View from our canal house

I know most of us read The Diary of a Young Girl growing up, so this was just surreal to see where all of her silent suffering took place. The museum shows all of the rooms in the office below as well as "The Annex". It had the stories of all individuals in hiding there as well as interviews with Otto Frank, who was the only survivor after the war. No pictures were allowed inside, but below is the outside + museum.

After this, we met up with John and Mallory. We grabbed lunch and walked around the city.

We made a quick jaunt around the Red Light District, but since I don't want my camera smashed into 100 pieces by an angry bouncer...and in an effort to keep this PG, no pics except one of the canal in that area!

That night, we grabbed some wine and pizza from La Perla in the Jordaan area. Yummy! We were pretty wiped after our day of traveling (and time zone changes), so we took the pizza to go and finished the night at our place.

Up next: Day 2 in Amsterdam!