Sunday, April 29th

We arrived at Amsterdam Airport at around 9:00 am local time.

After a nice breakfast and a nap, we purchased a bus strip ticket and took bus 54 to the Keukenof flower gardens, and had a wonderful time experimenting with flower photography. We did not bring any local currency with us, which turned out to be a problem because it costs E0.30 to use the restroom. Mei tried to offer the attendant $0.50, but he had pity on her and let her in for free.

Around 10:00 pm, we went into town to see downtown before Queen's Day.

Saturday, April 28th

On Saturday afternoon, we left our children at home with Mei's parents after a great dim sum lunch and drove down to the Sandy Springs MARTA station. After we checked our bag, the Delta agent asked us to enjoy ourselves, but cautioned us to stay out of the coffee houses. While waiting to board the plane, we enjoyed a brief chat with a friendly Netherlander who recommended that try the McKrocet from McDonald's and pay a short visit to Amsterdam's red light district and poke our heads into a coffee house, just to see what's what.

Friday, April 27th

Mei had already borrowed several books on Paris, but we did not have any information about Amsterdam. So, on the Friday evening before our trip, we took the kids to Barns & Nobles to find a small Amsterdam book/map. It was there that we experienced a brief panic when we realized that we did not know which country we were going to visit: Holland or the Netherlands!

The small Foders guide that we left the bookstore with did not clearly resolve the country issue for us, but we were reasonably confident that the "Amsterdam" that we would fly to the next day was the one described in the book. A quick visit to http://wikipedia.org/ after we returned at home resolved our concerns: folks often refer to the Netherlands as "Holland' however, North & South Holland are just two of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands.