Amsterdam - Week 3

Hello Family and Friends,

Since Mom and Dad left, we have been exploring Amsterdam as locals, on bikes. Brett and I went to one of the many bike shops in the city so that Brett could tinker with his bike. Brett loves having a project. If it is not his bike then its a puzzle.

An 1000 piece puzzle that Brett completed in 3 days. He likes to think we do it together so he saves me the last few pieces.

But when we were at the bike shop, I literally couldn't find parking for my bike. Parking a bike in the city is like parking a car in New York city. Instead of not enough car parking, there isn't enough bike parking.

 Definitely more bikes than cars.

Amsterdam has free parking garages just for bikes. Even when we were in Ghent, they were converting one of the historic buildings into bike parking. It's just a totally different world and I'm here for it!

Atlas has started daycare and he absolutely loves it. All weekend he was telling me "Mommy, I want to juego con los ninos" (His Spanglish phrasing for "Mommy, I want to play with the kids").

We have explored a few different neighborhoods that surrounds parks. Oosterpark has what I call a "puddle". It's not a splash pad, but also not a pool. It's about a foot of water that kids play in and around.

Atlas was so proud of himself when he jumped the first gap.

This park is closest to our hotel. I have seen fitness groups and dance groups in the park. However, Brett had me download this app (hoodmaps) that gives a crowdsourced opinion of different neighborhoods around the city and a part of this area was called "Drug dealers".

We also visited Vondelpark, which is a very large park with another "puddle", multiple playgrounds and people just enjoying the outdoors. Curious thing about Vondelpark is that it is the only park where it is legal to have sex. they even have laws concerning the barriers for sex in the park: under the cover of darkness, not in or around a playground and you have to clean up after yourself. I would love to have been in the legislative meeting when someone brought up the idea to just legalize sex in this one park.

To the southeast in an area called Amsterdam-Ziud (Amsterdam South) another great park, Beatrixpark. It isn't as busy as Vondelpark and half of it is under construction. Though to be honest, construction is a typical site in Amsterdam. It seems as if half the city is under construction. Entire roads closed down and GPS is super confused. However, there were lots of people walking their dogs in Beatrixpark and the area around it was just super cute. Single family brick homes right off the canal. Brett and I both really liked the feel of this area. We looked up the area on our crowd sourced map and they called it "rich af", "best place in Amsterdam" and "Guys in blue suits walking dogs". Of course we would like the most pricey area.

We also rode our bikes over to Westelpark. There was a huge green area, that Bruce will absolutely love as well as a school located right on the periphery of the park. Right off of the park is an old railroad station that is now little shops and cafes.