Holland - Livy

We headed to Holland to visit my family. As some of you may know, my dad is dutch. His parents are both immigrants from Holland. We will be meeting some of my third and second cousins. Our first stop in Holland would be my Opou and Opa"s home town, (My grandpa and grandma in dutch) Vroomshoope. It was a beautiful, tiny little town, with only 8,752 people. Our place was amazing! Me and Anneka each had our own room!!!!!!!!!! It was awesome. First we wen to visit my Tanta Netty and Om Yun. My grama's brother. During about the middle of our visit, my third cousins came. Guusje and Hannah. Guusje was ten and Hannah was seven. The perfect ages. They did not speak great English, but we managed to play a game-guess who. The next couple of days was spent meeting all of my family. My Grama's two other sisters, Tanta Cory and Tanta Munny. We met three other of my cousins who are 11, 8 and 7. Everyone was girls except for the 8 year old boy named Beau. We went over to my dads cousin's house and everyone was there. All the kids had a big water cup fight. We all got plastic cups and was filing them up in the baby pool then splashing each other. . It was really fun.

All the grown ups eating dinner

All the kids eating dinner

We were playing ring-around-a-rosy

This is everyone

 I really liked all of my cousins in Vroomshoope. We hit it off with all the girls and the next day we met Guusje and Hannah at the town pool for a afternoon. We played catch and went off the diving board. We played tag, and in Holland, they call it Tickey. I'm not sure if that is how you spell it but, we had fun regardless. We ended up meeting My Grampa's sister Tanta Lucy and her daughter too. We went to their house for about 1 or 2 hours. I was playing with the cat and Anneka fell in love with a dog there. Her daughter was named Linda and her daughter was there as well. It was a really nice visit. We also saw another person on my Grampas side. My dads cousin Anja,. We only visited with her for about 1 hour. She also had a 12 year old son, who we did not really get to know. I loved the little town of Vroomshope. It was so beautiful and amazing. I definitely want to come back here soon.

Om Yun used to be a fire fighter and he brought us to a muesem. They even named a street after him!!!

The museum

From the front

 We said goodbye to our family and headed to the bigger city, Amsterdam. We were there for 1 week. We were not staying inside of Amsterdam, just outside there is a smaller city called, Utrecht, and that is where we stayed. It was a very busy week. We had to see my dads cousin Gerjo, who lived about 1 hour away. We drove there and went to the church that he worked at. There was a massive Organ there, and guess what?? He let me and Anneka play it! We all got a little private tour up the bell tour and on the way, we stopped at were the organ was. Me and Anneka were taking turns playing it. We weren't very good, but it was still fun. Gerjo could play a couple of songs and he played us 2 of the ones he new. It was really beautiful click here to hear us play the organ

Us playing the Organ

The church Hario works at

The inside

In Utrecht we also met up with another one of my dads cousins, Andre. We met up with him in the morning and rented bikes for the day. I always forget how much I love biking. Anyways, we went around the whole city. It was a great day.

A church we went to

The gardens

From a different angle

We had a great day biking, it was so much better than walking! Another day we took the train into Amsterdam. We took a boat tour through the canals, and walked around the whole day. For lunch we ordered large fries thinking it would just be a snack. But it was huge. Possibly the biggest fries I have ever seen. Luckily we only got one to share. It was crazy huge. 

Us eating the fries

This was on the boat tour through the canals

Another boat

The canal

Cool buildings

This was taking from a bridge

Amsterdam was really cool because, one moment you would be in the old quarter with 600, 800 year old buildings, and the next, there would be modern skyscrapers. Anyway, at 3:30 we went to do a tour at the Anne Frank house. If you don't know who Anne Frank is, I will do my best to explain. Anne Frank was a 13 year old Jewish girl in World War two, and as you probably know, that was the worst time to be Jewish. Her family had to go into hiding for three years, and she kept a diary with her during this time. Sadly, she and her family were found and sent to the concentration camps, at the end of the war. She died at the age of 15, from Typhus Fever. Thankfully her father survived but nobody else did. He was able to publish her Diary which is now available all over the world. Now you can go and see were they were in hiding and learn about there life. Certain parts of the day, they could flush the toilet, they could only talk in a whisper, sometimes they could not even move!!! It was really sad, but a important part of history. I advise all of you to read: Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl. I actually really enjoyed the house, even though I shed a few tears.

The blue house was the one she stayed in, she was in the back on the top two floors. Sadly you could not take pictures on the inside, so this is the only one we have

One day, my mom, Anneka and Me all went to a science center in Amsterdam called NEMO. It was 5 floors in total and totally awesome. Each floor was about a different thing. Floor one was building things, floor two was everything, floor three was water, floor 4 was earth and the Univers, and floor 5 was body. My favorite floor was floor one or two. 

This is Nemo from the outside

I loved Amsterdam and Utreckt. They were both beautiful cities, but I don't think anything could beat Vroomshoope. Holland is a beautiful country and I will definitely be coming back to meet my relatives again. 

NEXT STOP, ENGLAND!!!