Week in the Netherlands

Groningen

We were heading right to the north of the Netherlands, for Dad's work, to a place called Groningen. We had to travel on a train for about five hours! On the first day we climbed the Martini Tower. A funny story is after they won a war, they made a bonfire to celebrate and show off, except they obviously were not thinking because the top was made of wood, and it burned down! So they had to rebuild it.

The next day we went to the Rodin exhibition in the the very modern Groninger Museum. We got to see the world famous sculpture called The Thinker, that was my favourite! After that exhibition we had a sneak peek at the other modern exhibition by Maarten Baas and my favourite part of that was the clock room, in there there was lots of grandfather clocks but with screens on them so it made them look like there were people in the clocks changing the time every minute! On our last night we spent a lot of time looking for a restaurant, but finally Osh and I found a Greek restaurant. The food was really nice, and so was the waiter, he once was a professional soccer player in Greece and had a really positive philosophy to life! That restaurant was really nice!

Amsterdam

After Groningen we went to the very well known Amsterdam. When we got there it was around five in the afternoon. We got the instructions up and tried to use them to get to our apartment, when that didn't work we got google maps going and that didn't work either! So, by the time we got to our apartment it was seven thirty, so it took us two and a half hours to get there! When we found the street, Dad got his emails to find the exact address, as google maps made us go to the wrong house and ring the wrong doorbell, luckily no one came to the door! When dad checked his emails there was a charming email from our host:
Dear Michael and family,
You are too late, please find yourself another hotel!
We were all pretty annoyed but Dad rang the guys doorbell and was ready to give him a talking to because it was seven thirty at night! The guy came to the the door and Dad was ready to take him on! But, we got a very different welcome than we expected: He was very cheerful and was telling Dad to relax, relax, we did not know what to think!

The next day the first thing we did was go to Madame Tussaud's! My favourite was Rafael Nadal and Thor! It was super realistic! Osh was really happy because he saw Lionel Messi! (not the real person of course)!

After that we had to wait in a two street line for around one and a half hours to go to the Anne Frank House, but it was totally worth it! You got to go through Anne Frank's house and the secret annex where she hid from the Nazi's until they found her! It was really touching!

The next day we went to the Rijks Museam and Mum went to the Vincent Van Gogh museum. He was a Dutch post impressionist painter. He created about 2100 paintings. Mum's favourites were Sunflowers, Iris' and the Potato Eaters. In the Rijks museum Osh and I got to do a museum quest on our audio headset, it told us where to look in the museum for clues to get to solve the secret word. The most famous and my favourite artwork was the Night Watch by Rembrandt. He was a Dutch 17th century painter. I also loved the ship models that were models of old sailing boats. The Dutch used to import and export goods and some ships were even used to fight off pirates in their waters! There was even a super cool sword that had a pistol on it, so if the gun ran out of gunpowder or bullets, he could still fight with his sword!

That night Mum and I went on a canal cruise, Dad and Osh did not come because Osh thought he would get sick, it was a pity because it was amazing and it took you all the way to the harbour, and it went for one and a half hours!

On our last day we went to the canal house museum called the Willet-Holthuysen museum! It was a double sized canal house mansion! The owners were very posh people with no kids so they could use all their money on their house, garden and servants! It was very fancy and had lots of beautiful paintings and rooms in it! The garden had lots of hedges, all perfectly cut in various styles and fancy patterns! It also had a great view of the canal!

In the train station to come back to Belgium there was a grand piano and Osh got the courage to play it, that was great!