Amsterdam - Finale

Our next day in Amsterdam we spent the morning checking out the local street market. We got to do a mini cheese tasting, bought some Dutch cheese and walked around some other areas of the city we hadn't seen yet.

We revisited the playground the kids had enjoyed previously. Carlton and I tried to help even out the weight on the seesaw!

The kids picked their favorite things to do around the playground. Gavin enjoyed climbing to the top of the climber and Avery loved the tricycle on the path.

Then we stopped for a snack at a restaurant that was built to be a carousel but never actually opened for the purpose. The carousel remains inside though. The kids enjoyed some poffertjes and the decorations. 

Then we meandered a bit and checked out more buildings.

In our wandering, we came across a small park that had statues of iguanas all over!

From here we moved to a hotel at the airport. We were staying at a hotel that was about a 45 minute drive from the airport and since we had a morning flight, we didn't want to be rushed trying to wake kids up, finish packing and getting to the airport. So we found a hotel that was connected to the airport by a pedestrian bridge! It was perfect! Only a ten minute walk from the hotel to the airport. We took a walk there the night before our flight to see how long it would take but also to get our bearings. Good thing we did because it took us awhile to figure out where we had to go for our flight!

Pictures of our new hotel room and this last pic on the right is part of the decoration at the restaurant in the hotel. They are molds for chocolate making.

Now just a few pictures of the airport. We got there early because we were warned security would be horrible but it ended up being pretty quick!

The giant tulips and big pottery pieces were part of a restaurant in the airport. The pottery pieces were booths. Then we also saw this cool clock at the airport. Carlton took a short video so you can see. Basically it's a video of a guy who is erasing the minute hand every minute and redrawing it to show the new time! Very cute...the kids loved it!

And of course we had to get a couple pictures on the plane.  9.5 hours and no one slept the entire time!! Gavin was too excited about being able to play video games and Avery enjoyed watching all the different shows available. Here's Avery modeling the sleep mask she received in her travel kit from the airline.

We arrived back to our airport with no problems and then found the battery in our car was dead! Luckily we keep a battery jumper in the car. Also our windshield had cracked while we were gone. Other than that, no major catastrophes! We ended up being awake for 21 hours straight (the kids took a 20 minute nap on the ride home from the airport). Luckily we all recovered from our jetlag fairly quickly and Gavin was back on his normal schedule in time to go back to school!

It was a wonderful trip and a great experience for our first overseas trip as a family of four! We are looking forward to our next international destination!! Any suggestions?