Hotel de Ville

One day I stopped sneezing long enough to walk across the river to Hotel De Ville.

Not much more than a pretty place to take photos but hey, sometimes that's all a girl needs.

(that and like 20 boxes of tissues and 3 bottles of nyquil and an adequate supply of pillows.)

But other than that!

RIJKS and for once I spelled it right.

I had a little epiphany in the Rijksmuseum a few days ago. And while that epiphany is probably better suited for a journal or a diary or maybe a piece of paper to be crumpled and shoved under my bed (you should see the stash! Actually, you shouldn't.) But, it was an epiphany that made me happy and bubbly and left me that way for a few days...and it was nice to have that little epiphany to think about when the Flu came to say hi (bonjour actually!)

Also have you ever written about an epiphany because that word is addicting. Epiphany this, Epiphany that!

A MONDRIAN!!!! We almost didn't go to that wing, but, wow. Mondrian has been my favorite for forevvver. Now it's time to make this, because who doesn't want to eat their favorite piece of art?

As you can see, the Rijks was quite dreamy. Both from the perspective of taking in art and creating your own, if you could call it that. To each his own! Van Gogh painted a selfie for pete's sake! There's probably a hashtag on the back or something....time to go back to Amsterdam. You know, just to check.

(also for a million other reasons.)

THE FRENCH SUMMER OF MY SOUL

There's a reason bliss and baguette begin with the same letter....

Cheers to summer days in France!

HALLO HAARLEM

If you equate Amsterdam to New York the Haarlem is the Brooklyn of this situation. Haarlem (though different from New York's Harlem, I'm assuming!) was amazing. All kinds of amazing cafes and shops and REAL people. Like families and babies and puppies and people who look like they're doing more with their life than tasting pastries.

Which is basically all I do so um...

LEVI'S WINKEL

So what a coincidence that I'm talking about pastries next! (Is Pie a pastry? Or its own category? Carry on.) This cafe is unique because It's owned by a 14 year old boy, who we saw in the flesh and I was tempted to ask for his autograph. Just because, you know! There's a video on it here (all in dutch, granted) but I will tell you that Levi has had a haircut, thankfully, and now looks as good as that pie. Well....almost, because pie.

TEN BOOM MUSEUM

Everyone and their second cousin has read the Anne Frank Diary, which is fine and all, but that means its way more popular. Instead of waiting in the 3 hour long line at the Anne Frank House we went to the Corrie Ten Boom house in Haarlem. It was incredible and in my opinion, better than the Anne Frank House simply because the tour was lead from a Christian perspective (and the wait was probably 15 minutes so basically Ten Boom>Frank House. But suit yourself.)

Grote Markt and Ons graan jouw brood
After the house tour we walked around Haarlem and explored the Grote Markt and the smell from Ons Graan guided us in. It was a nearly divine experience. Forget boys, fresh bread is the way to my heart.

On another note, I can't figure out why my clothes are a little tighter.
The two can't be related. ;)

A PLUS FOR AMSTERDAM.

*cheesy Fault in Our Stars Quote*

I swear the only reason teenage girls know that Amsterdam exists is because of Hazel Grace Lancaster. Despite all the history and the VAN GOUGH museum and you know, other things of significance. I am happy to report that I DID in fact know Amsterdam existed before the craze, but even after I still wasn't interested in coming. I was convinced that Amsterdam was nothing more than sex and the fault in our stars....which may or may not be one in the same.

AMSTERDAM IS SO COOL. It's amazing. The people are friendly and most everyone speaks English very well, I've never seen cooler coffee shops in my life (Paris needs to get with the times) and the cute canal streets are an instagrammers dream, if I may be so shallow as to say so.

Amsterdam is broken into many parts because, Amsterdam.

#gramthedam

BOCA'S
Now I'm NOT  a foodie but I did really enjoy the food/cafe portions of our trip. So much so that I actually wrote down everywhere we went (That was good!) Our first night we ate at Boca's and ended up ordering the same thing as the people next to us, unintentionally. They probably thought we copied them but whatever.

BLOEMENMARKT
A floating flower market! This made my flower loving heart very happy. It was different than I expected (super touristy and not a ton of fresh flowers) but there are bulbs upon bulbs of every type of tulip you can ever imagine. I ended up with a bag of peonies bulbs because I like to prove that I am not swayed by cultural norms or the status quo but instead choose to be different and original and forge my own path.

Also, I really like peonies.

HI EVERYONE HERES A PHOTO OF ME ON THE SAME BENCH THAT ANSEL ELGOT SAT ON....AKA HOLY GROUND. CUE ALL THE FEELS AND PUNS AND METAPHORS.

Also, I actually don't really love The Fault in Our Stars. I just really like participating in average teenage girl things.

More Amsterdam coming soon and PS:

Really proud of my snapchat story that day. ;)

THE JUAN I LOVE (and more!)

Sorry to be bugging you with photos of tropical paradise again, but 2014 kind of got in the way of my blue skies photo spamming, so here we are again! This time to talk about San Juan. Let me be your imaginary travel agent for a moment (It's my favorite role to play.) and advise you on what to do, where to go...etc. 

In other words, let me boss you around! Like I said, it's my specialty.

 ▲▲ Make sure you head to Del Morro (or excuse me Fort San Felipe del Morro,whatever. ) on your trip! We spent the morning there and there are lots of nooks and crannies to get lost in and killer ocean views from the roof. However, as we found out the roof is HIGHLY DANGEROUS so don't go there. What's the saying, do as I say not as I do? Something like that.

▲▲ After you are evicted from the roof (because with those views you'll want to move in.) wander through cat land to colorful Old San Juan. Obviously I am having way to much fun with the JUAN YOU LOVE pun, but you will love it. Pink houses, I was in heaven.

▲▲ Actually my favorite part was driving through the jungle-ly mountains. (mostly because there was AC.) My dad is king of finding random gems and we drove up this windy road and had a grand time (listening to mariachi band music no less!) Puerto Rico has no shortage of beautiful and interesting sights..!

▲▲ The square inch of beach we visited was probably the least impressive sight of our trip. And while I've heard that of gorgeous Puerto Rican beaches, the one we went to (an adventure in itself just getting there!) looked exactly like what we have here, so I was not too impressed. Better Luck next time PR!

Okay kids, that's all from sunny Puerto Rico. It was certainly good to go a different country (so to speak) and hopefully was good preparation for any other South American countries we travel too!

Party in Puerto Rico.

A few things about Puerto Rico...

1. Cats. Everywhere! It must be where cats go when they die beacause the ammount was kind of scary. Cat lovers, get yourself to PR and your life will be made.

2. COLOR! Finally a place that believes in color, and lots of it. I'll have pics of San Juan and you will see the greatness I speak of.

3. There is such a thing as Island time! Or, people on PR are seriously influenced/inspired by molasses because things are slllloooow. But that makes it all the merrier and more of an adventure. So yay for island time!

 Look at that view! 

Anyway, peace out Puerto Rico! You were cool. Just kidding, you were REALLY hot. (90 degrees on December 20th anyone? I didn't think so.)