Amsterdam, Belgium, Pancakes!

The month of May has come and gone, and June is already here! How the time has flown these past few weeks...it's so weird to be able to say, "I'll be home next month!" Home seems like such a relative term these days. I am so used to my life here now, getting up and cycling to school everyday, spending Friday nights at Vierkantje with the girls, being teased by my brothers at home, etc. It feels so normal, but at the same time like a parallel universe that I've been living in, one that will soon just be a memory.

On another note, Maddie and I have continued having the most amazing time together. Saturday we did visit Anne Frank's house, which was well worth the hour long wait in line. The "museum," building of their hiding place, was smaller than I had imagined, yet their area within the building was larger than I had pictured. It was a very emotional visit for us, seeing as we have both read her diary several times and everything we have grown up learning about her life was put into perspective yesterday. Out of all of the museums that I've been to in Europe, this would have been the most eye-opening.

We also walked through the Red Light District, which if it weren't for all the tourists around, would have been a sketchy place to be alone...in every window was a woman, of almost any age, posing in kinky lingerie. Let's just say you can't un-see a seventy-year-old lady in a thong! It was a great area to wander in and out of the tourist shops of course, with bongs and pipes displayed in the windows and weed leaf designs plastered on the walls. Welcome to Amsterdam!

We ate fresh, delicious poffertjes in the center of the city as well as patats- one thing I know that I'm going to miss are the fries here! We ended our day drinking tea at Starbucks, and then hopping back on the train.

Sunday we took out the family for a pancake lunch in Haarlem, where Rob's sister owns a pancake house. They were, hands down, the best pannenkoeken that I have ever eaten in Holland. Maddie and I shared a pineapple pancake and an apple w/raisins pancake, and I swear I could live off of them my entire life. Mhhmm!


Yesterday, we had one of the best days since she's been here. We went to Antwerp! It's still such a shock to me that you can spend the day in a different country so easily....what did we do in Belgium? Drank lots of beer, ate chocolate, ate fresh waffles, ate patats, and shopped until we dropped. The weather was decent, no rain that is, and the food was killer.


Maddie leaves tomorrow! I don't know what I'm going to do without her. Luckily when we say goodbye, it will only be for five weeks as opposed to ten months. She has helped me so much these past few weeks, and I feel like we've gotten so much closer. I'm so fortunate to have such a strong relationship with my sister, and hope that whatever our futures may bring, we won't ever be too far from each other.

-Molly