Europe with kids

Europe Trip Stop 14: Antwerp, Belgium

May 14, 2018

May 11, 2018

Last stop on our adventure….Antwerp, Belgium. We drove through on the way back and well, the Belgian chocolate and waffles were calling our name!

about a 4.5 hour drive from our Giverny Hotel to Antwerp

Antwerp was a great place to get a taste of Belgium for a few hours. The old gothic style buildings were so ornate and the city was lively.

There was a chocolate shop every 50 feet! Like fancy chocolates that were so pretty. It took us a while to decide which shop we wanted to buy our chocolates at. We got to pick out the ones we wanted and put them in a pink Belgium house tin, which was a bonus because we collect little houses from everywhere we go.

There were street entertainers that the girls just loved to dance to their music. We found another castle and climbed on all of the monuments. I was worried Eloise would get bored in the city, but the girls just made their own fun adventure wherever we went.

I was glad that I only had one of my kids with me though. It would have been difficult to keep track of 4 kids. I was able to relax only having to keep an eye on 1 kid running around. I would have been totally on edge with more than that. Totally doable, but the stress factor would have increased greatly.

We still can’t believe how lucky we were with the weather at every place we went. It was like the perfect temperature, the sun was always out just enough so that it wasn’t blinding us or we were sweating all day. Never had to mess with sunscreen! Not to cold that we had to mess with big coats. If you have kids you know that coats/hats/gloves and sunscreen are just a hot mess.

So if you do this trip (which I highly recommend) May 1-12 was the perfect time to go to all of the locations. I may even recommend to go a few days earlier to make sure to get the tulips in Holland as we cut it very close to deadheading time.

I hope documenting our adventures gives you some ideas and inspiration for planning your trip! I can’t tell you how helpful all of the bloggers out there were when planning this trip. So many places I would never have though to adventure came from other bloggers.

There really wasn’t a whole lot I found online about traveling to these specific places with young children so I for sure wanted to get it blogged to help some parents that travel with kids. I absolutely love traveling with my kids and I really don’t like traveling without them, but to be done right it takes a lot more planning when the kids are along.

Adventures Uncategorized

Europe Trip Stop 11: Amsterdam, Netherlands

May 11, 2018

May 8, 2018

After the morning at Zaans Schans we spent the afternoon exploring Amsterdam which is about 30 minutes south and on our way back to Breda.

The street entertainers are a favorite of the girls as well as chasing pigeons around town squares.

We ate lunch, went shopping explored the canals.

Adventures

Europe Trip Stop 10: Zaanse Schans, Netherlands

May 10, 2018

May 8, 2018

Next stop learning about traditional Dutch culture in North Holland about 1.5 hours north of Breda and about 30 minutes north of Amsterdam.

Zaanse Schans (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈzaːnsə ˈsxɑns]) is a neighbourhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk, Netherlands. It is best known for its collection of well-preserved historic windmills and houses. It’s an open-air museum which is a free outdoor park with a collection of historical windmills. You can also find the very first Albert Heijn grocery store in the Netherlands. This monumental building is now a museum complete with the original furniture and fixtures from 1887.

There is a wooden shoe workshop at the Zaanse Schans where we got to see the clog makers make clogs and learn about the history of wooden shoes.

We also got to go inside a real working windmill.

In de Gecroonde Duyvekater Bakery Museum is located in a charming house dating back to 1658. The bakery is decorated in 19th-century style and features an authentic oven from that time. The bakery got its name from a type of sweet bread that is still made in the Zaan region.

Kuiperij in Zaanse Schans is where barrels were made to transport goods. The historic family business has been preserved exactly as it was during the cooperage heyday and is now managed by the Zaans Museum. The Zaans Museum tells the story of daily life in the Zaan region over the centuries. The Zaan was one of the oldest industrial areas in Europe, and wind and water played an essential role in its success.

The Catharina Hoeve is an authentic 17th-century cheese farm where you can attend a cheese making demonstration, as well as tasting the various products and exploring the gift shop, where you’ll find a wide variety of cow, sheep and goat products.

Adventures

Europe Trip Stop 1: The Netherlands – Tulip Fields of Lisse Holland

May 1, 2018

May 1-2, 2018 – Kansas City to The Netherlands
Lindsay (my best friend in the whole world) moved to the Netherlands a few years ago and I have wanted to visit her ever since. She has a daughter named Mila that is exactly 3 month younger than my daughter Eloise. The girls FaceTime and get along surprisingly well considering they only see each other once, maybe twice a year. They pick up right where they left off.

So, I happened to not be pregnant or nursing a baby. My husband told me I better go visit her while I have the chance. I did not hesitate! And I had to take Eloise because she wanted to visit Mila. So my awesome husband stayed home and held down the fort.

I didn’t just go visit her though. I mean we went there, but first we planned the most spectacularly amazing European Castle road trip we could imagine….that we could get done in 12 days. Because, you know, I have four kids, I can’t be gone longer than 12 days even if I am taking the most difficult one of them with me.

12 days, 9 countries, 2 moms, 2 four year old girls, a dad(/photographer/driver/body guard) and a dog……..here we go!

**Side note, I did not take my big camera on this trip. 99% of my photos where taken on my iPhone because it was easier, more convenient and I just wanted to enjoy my time and have memories without worrying about hauling my giant camera and arsenal of lenses around.

We flew from Kansas City to Chicago first. I made sure we flew out of the closest city to KC and the latest flight so that we could just hop on the international flight and go right to sleep. We left Chicago at 7:00pm slept on the plane and woke up at 9:20am in Amsterdam (2:20am Kansas City time). Tired, but not exhausted. I’m glad we had the one long 8 hour flight instead of two 4 hour flights. that way we could get a longer period of sleep in.

When we arrived we went straight to the airport bathroom, changed clothes, grabbed Starbucks and left straight for the tulip fields of Holland. It was May 2nd and the tulips were starting to get chopped! They have big machines that go in and take off the heads of the tulips before they are fully dead. It is crazy to see because it looks like they are just chopping down a field of beautiful flowers. I guess that is what they have to do though because they are growing them for the bulbs, not the flowers.

Lindsay and Mila picked us up in their car and we left from Amsterdam airport and headed for Lisse, Netherlands which is the place to be for tulips. In Lisse seeing tulip fields during the season is like soy bean or corn fields in Kansas. They are all over the place and you can just pull the car over and run through the fields! We drove along some beautiful scenic roads and would stop whenever we saw a new color of tulips to run through. It was pretty windy that day too, reminded me a lot of Kansas. Except instead of the long fences along the fields, they have canals to separate the land. The tulip fields only bloom for 3-4 weeks out of the year though so you have to time it just perfectly. And we did! If we would have shown up 2 days later we wouldn’t have seen any tulip fields in bloom.

Lisse, Netherlands Tulip Fields

The tulips are such a bucket list thing to do and have to be hit at the right time, chances are we won’t get to see them again.

It was so neat when we flew in to Amsterdam to look out the airplane window and see the massive fields of tulips! A great first impression of The Netherlands.

And of course some videos and “outtakes” of our windy tulip field visit.

Keukenhof Garden
After running around the tulip fields we decided to go visit Keukenhof Gardens

Keukenhof in Dutch or “Kitchen garden” in English also known as the Garden of Europe, is one of the world’s largest flower gardens, situated in Lisse, South Holland, Netherlands. Approximately 7 million flower bulbs are planted annually in the park, which covers an area of 79 acres. The park is open from mid-March through mid-May each year.

Nijntje “Miffy” the Bunny

This is also where we learned about Miffy the sweet little bunny who is pretty much the mascot of the Netherlands. Everywhere we would go we would look for Miffy.

Miffy (Dutch: Nijntje) is a small female rabbit in a series of picture books drawn and written by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. The original Dutch name, “Nijntje”, is a shortening of konijntje, “little rabbit”. The first Miffy book was produced in 1955, and almost 30 others have followed. In total they have sold over 85 million copies

We also tried our first stroopwafel (literally “syrup waffle”) is a waffle made from two thin layers of baked dough with a caramel syrup filling in the middle. It is a favorite Dutch treat.