My grandparents were the reason for our trip to Holland in the first place. This September will be their 50th wedding anniversary and since they both immigrated from Holland, they thought it would be fun to celebrate over there with relatives that still live there.
So we flew into Amsterdam and stayed a night in our hostel in the Red Light District.
We did see all the typical things you'd expect to see in Amsterdam; canals,
wooden shoes,
Open air markets,
where we bought stroopwafel made right in front of us (so good!!!)
cheese stores where you can sample all different kinds of cheese (also so good),
Amsterdam needs the bike parking lots because there are so many people in the city and there isn't room for everyone to drive cars. Guess that's why some choose to drive a car like this:
This is Dam Square. See how many people there are?
And of course we enjoyed gebakjes (dutch pastries).
After time in Amsterdam we got our own little car,
packed all our things in it,
and drove to these cabins on a working dairy farm to stay with my family. My grandma found these cabins and reserved them for us. They were absolutely adorable!
There were 14 of us from the States that came to stay in 3 cabins on this farm in Woubrugge. Here's everybody: my aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunt and uncle, sister and grandpa. Unfortunately despite all her planning my grandma wasn't able to make the trip. She was missed horribly.
This is the dining room. See those doors?
That is where Ben and I slept.
One night we invited friends and relatives still living in Holland to come to the farm for a visit. Here is a group picture of everyone who was able to make it. It was fun to meet relatives I'd never seen before (or at least remembered seeing them before).
Also at the cabins were row boats. 
We all took turns rowing.
The first day at the cabins we went to a little town named Leiden. My grandpa was kind enough to take us to a pannenkoekenhuis. This is where they serve "pancakes" bigger than your face. I had ham, cheese and mushrooms on mine. I couldn't finish it it was so big -but delicious!
The next day my aunts and uncles wanted to go to Amsterdam but since we'd just been there we got to spend a day with my grandpa. He took us to Scheveningen to this little restaurant on the beach. Here is my grandpa being responsible and protecting his head from the sun since he forgot his hat.
And Ben enjoying his long island ice tea.
Brittany found this good looking Dutchman.
After Scheveningen my grandpa thought it would be a good idea to see the Parliament building in Den Haag. He gave me a map of the COUNTRY and told him to navigate to the building in the CITY. (By the way, this is not possible). Instead we drove around for about 4 hours in circles -never to find the elusive Parliament building. We did however make a wrong turn into a parking garage and had to pay to get out of the stupid thing. Ben and Brittany in the backseat thought this whole adventure was quite hilarious.
The next day all 14 of us went to Delft. This was perhaps my favorite city in Holland. It was so quaint and welcoming. Ben and I climbed to the top of this church (375 steps),
and saw this view.
Another example of the canals in Holland.
Delft is where they make Delft's Blue so we went to the factory to see how it's made.
Everything is hand painted. The paint goes on black and when it's fired it comes out blue.
The other thing people think of when thinking of Holland is windmills so we were to Kinderdijk where they have lots of those.
And there's our 3 week trip in 3 blog posts. We really did have such a great time!
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