The McSpaugh’s Visit! – Amsterdam day 2 (Sept. 16)

We grabbed breakfast at Café Hans en Grietje where we had some yummy pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice before heading to our boat tour. We used the Blue Boat Company and we thought they did a really good job – they had headsets for each person and you could pick between like 10 languages, so we were able to hear lots of interesting information about Amsterdam in English. The city looks so pretty from the water- we got to ride along most of the major canals, the Amstel River, and out into the harbor.

When we finished up the boat tour we walked over to the Rijksmuseum. We looked around the outside and then went around back to see the big “I Amsterdam” sign. We didn’t have enough time to go through the museum, so we’ll have to try to do that next time. We walked a little farther down Stadhouderskade to the Heineken Brewery (which was probably the highlight of the trip for Morgan and Austin). It was pretty interesting learning about the history of Heineken and how the beer is made.. we even got to try some wort (the liquid that is extracted during the mashing process).. it wasn’t very tasty! After learning about how the beer is made you walk by the stables where they keep the Heineken horses (Kelly’s favorite part of the day) and then go upstairs to learn about the proper way to pour a beer, have a few samples at the bar, and check out a few other Heineken experience type things (ie. Video games, commercials on huge jumbo screens, a Heineken 3D experience where you become beer, etc).  When we finished up at the brewery we walked along P.C. Hooftstraat to see the shops and stopped at Chipsy King to have some pommes frites with mayo (which is actually pretty good!).  

We made our way to the car so we could get on the road back to Osnabrück but first we stopped by Ben’s old home on Majubastraat. I think it took about 30 minutes on the road for Kelly and Austin to pass out.. not that we blame them! 🙂