“Next to God, thy parents.” William Penn

So, MY PARENTS WERE JUST HERE and I’d like to think that now that they have seen Amsterdam in all its glory, they’ll be back!!!

Mom arrived on Friday morning bright and early in the morning. Now I think I’ve said this before, but so many things close early on week nights, so it’s nearly impossible to run certain errands during the week with the hours I’m at work. My wonderful mother graciously agreed to run some errands with me right off the bat when she got in town. My washer broke 2 days before they arrived, so I needed to get laundry done, then needed to make a pharmacy run, and then it was time to relax and roam around.

We started by walking through the Albert Cuyp market (my local market) and grabbing some coffee/breakfast at a local Netherlands chain, Bagels & Beans which I believe was the first to bring the “bagel” to the mainstream of Amsterdam. Now - I guarantee you, it is nothing like a New York Bagel. Please. Nothing can compare. From the market/breakfast we just started to walk around my neighborhood, towards Museumplein (where most of the main museums are in Amsterdam) and just make our way around the city.

Decided to take a break in the afternoon and relax (ahem, nap for mama). It was much needed after being on our feet for a while. Then we went to dinner and the most AMAZING PERUVIAN RESTAURANT IN AMSTERDAM. It was possibly the best meal I’ve had since moving here. The food was a fresh take on classic Peruvian and was out. of. this. world. In case anyone cares to go in the future when you visit, it’s called NAZKA. They important spices and ingredients directly from Peru to concoct their food and drinks. We called it an early night because the VIP was arriving Saturday morning at 7:30am (which was a Sasha pickup job!)

Saturday morning dad arrived! With a special extra suitcase for moi containing lots of goodies from the US! (You know, mostly baking supplies that I cant get here!). We followed the same journey the day before, back to my apartment to drop off his things, sit for a minute and see what we would do that day. We went for brunch at my new local haunt (Bakers & Roasters). If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you've probably seen the amazing food this Kiwi place cooks up. After brunch, we walked through the market again - showed dad all the good foods you can get. After the market, to keep him awake, we decided to train over to Haarlem. It’s the original Haarlem, my New York friends.

Haarlem is this fantastic quaint little town just West of Amsterdam (about 20m by train). They are known to have the best shopping in the Netherlands, so clearly Dad and I needed to go. The three of us walked around for a bit and then got lunch and gelato. The lunch was good, the gelato was meh. We continued to walk around (Sasha bought some stuff of course) and then decided to head back so mom and dad could check into their hotel.

My parents stayed in a hotel room decorated like Van Gogh's starry night. How weird but cool. The furniture was even based off of one of his paintings!

Dinner that night was at Umami over in the West. It was asian fusion tapas and the way the restaurant works is by course. So each person can order two items per course and its price fixed. So we had 6 plates of food through 3 or 4 rounds. Holy crap was that a lot of food! We called it a night and I let the old folks get some sleep. Of course, I'm one of them so I was in bed by 10 too!

Sunday was the one day we had all day plans. With my bag packed and prepped, I headed off to meet my parents for breakfast at their hotel. From there we walked into the city. Through Leidseplein and up around centraal and we just walked around. Our first order of scheduled business was the Anne Frank museum. I hadn’t been there yet, so it was nice to go with my parents. When you get there, you can see why the museum gets booked up so far in advance. There were so many people! The story we all know pretty well, but the house really is empty. One of the tougher things to imagine is just how they all lived in such a small space. It's unimaginable in today’s world, really.

After the museum, we made a grocery pit stop for some snacks to bring along on our CANAL BOAT TOUR! Now, I’d been carrying around a very special Mallorcan (wink wink) bottle of wine all day in preparation for this tour. I wanted to make sure it was relaxing and special for my parents first time in Amsterdam! We of course booked with Those Dam Boat Guys (who I would recommend for anyone that wants to do a canal boat tour in Amsterdam). They’re hilarious, fantastic, and can cater the tours to what YOU are interested in and want to learn or see. So, of course the tour was amazing. Our guide was hilarious. And we had an amazing time. Up next was fancy dinner night (or fancier dinner night) at Mr. Porter, an incredible steakhouse in the W Hotel. The food was outstanding and the bartender even convinced my dad to try a new whiskey (that he liked and will now probably buy and add to his collection at home!). We all agreed that i ordered the best dish of the night, the beef short rib. I say rib, not ribs. It was one, giant, fall off the bone, rib. And it was incredible.

Now. I had offered my parents a walk through the red light district, not thinking much of it. But after dinner, we did just that. For anyone who comes here with their parents? It’s never not going to be awkward. It is unavoidable. But thankfully it was quick and relatively painless!

Onto Monday! The last day they were here. We had breakfast at the hotel again and made our way into the city. Now, my dad loves his sneakers, and we had walked by an ecco store the other day while it was closed. The brand is from Denmark originally so the stores locally here have a much larger selection than those in the US. I also knew that there was a very unique concept store in Amsterdam that would have one if a kind sneakers. So that’s where we started our afternoon. Two pairs of awesome sneakers later and he was a happy camper. Of course that didnt stop us from going into a regular ecco store to look at shoes (mom and I needed to look for ourselves!!). Remember that suitcase of goodies dad brought with him for me? Well he went home with his own suitcase of goodies with sneakers for the both of them! And I snuck in buying a pair for myself…

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in my apartment after a long weekend and went for dinner. Overall it was amazing to have them here and I hope they loved it enough to consider coming back to visit again in the future!

Until next time mom and dad!!

"And may sunshine and happiness surround you when you're far from home" -Rod Stewart

Well hello again! It’s been a while since we’ve talked. Where did I leave you last?

PRIDE WEEKEND! Was so much fun. First of all, I had some family passing through on their European vacation, so I got dinner with the whole crew Friday night. Following dinner was an unexpected late night out with some friends roaming around the Red Light district. The streets were MAD with people everywhere all night long celebrating Pride (which as I said last time, started an entire week prior).

Following a late night, came a late start to the actual Pride Parade. Made it out around 3pm with a couple of friends just as the floats on the canals were starting to go by. The streets were packed along Prinsengracht (the parade route). People were balancing on walls and even posts between the sidewalk and the street. I definitely don’t have the balance to do that myself. We roamed along the streets and canals for hours just enjoying the parade craziness. As we got tired (7pm ish) we made a pit stop for some french fries (of course) and then some gelato. I thought I might be able to nap and rally, but the nap became sleep and the sleep ended around 7am the next day….

The next two weeks pretty much flew by between work, some happy hours, etc. No major life events or updates. I was mostly prepping for my mini vacation and the upcoming parental visit (aka, shopping and cleaning). Made it to my new favorite brunch place (Bakers & Roasters), which is probably not the best brunch in town, but holds a better candle than most to what I’ve tried so far!

Now, onto my absolutely WONDERFUL 4 day vacation to the amazing Mallorca, Spain. This is trip #2 to Spain in 3 months, can you believe it? What a life I live now. Mallorca was absolutely beautiful. We left rainy, chilly Amsterdam for 4 days of heat and sunshine! The flight out was at 5am. FIVE IN THE MORNING. But we immediately went to the beach when we got there, so I could semi-nap again.

No surprise to the world, I got pretty decently sunburnt on Day 1 of the trip. Sunscreen apparently can’t take the Mallorcan sun very well. Or my body can’t! After the beach, it was time for tapas. So many tapas. Basically tapas all weekend long. Day 2 was wineries, Drach Caves (touristy but so worth it), and then a night out with the Birthday Girl, Amanda! More beaches and exploring the next day too! On our last day there, we took the car and drove UP UP UP the mountains to Deià. It’s this tiny little town on top of some very windy roads up, but the views are amazing and 100% worth the drive.

It was sad to leave after 4 wonderful days of true vacation, but I also get to look forward to my parents visiting! And the my best friend Brittani! So lots to come soon. It’s my dad’s first time in Amsterdam ever, so I will be taking him through all the touristy things around town!

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn

So it’s been over a month, whoops. This may become a trend, but I’ll try to avoid that. Time really does fly and it’s hard to keep up!

Work has been hectic, although that’s normal. The project pushed out a bit farther than we had planned, so we’re still going strong and I’m likely fully involved through August. BUT we do have some new exciting ventures we’re going to tackle once this project is complete, so I’m really excited to get to join a unique team to work on company development!

Now back to the fun stuff! To celebrate July 4th (which was a Thursday) we, the Americans, made plans to have an awesome BBQ in one of the parks in Amsterdam. The first thing I learned is that a lot of parks in Amsterdam do not allow grills at all, so we found the one park in West that already had some in place! We even invited some of our “Honorary Americans” aka the Brits the celebrate with us as they’d never experienced a true American BBQ. We had burgers, brats, pasta salad, veggies, corn bread, etc. It was a fantastic spread. & then it rained. A nice little drizzle ALL DAY LONG. Luckily, most of us are used to it in the Netherlands by now, so we lasted most of the day outside in the rain xD
I will say, I think most of the people at the park were looking at us going “typical Americans….”, but it was worth it!!

I got pulled in to help out a US project after that and had to travel a few times in the past couple of weeks to Germany to review and track status of material critical to that job. It was my first experience in Germany and it was a plant in a tiny town just across the border from the Netherlands. It was a nice break from the normal day to day and of course I got schnitzel for lunch at least once on my journeys!

We had a celebratory happy hour with our Subcontractors two weeks back to say thank you for helping us get through this tough project. We held it AT THE BEACH and it was a great turnout. Of course, as predicted, there was a bit more rain, but luckily not too much to stop the fun. A group of us even ended back in Amsterdam to continue the party for the night (& I was the only one at work the next day!).

This last weekend we had an internal company wide leadership meeting day to follow up on a similar one held back in November. Since I clearly wasn’t at that one, it was a great experience to hear from our leadership out here and get an understanding for some of the major struggles and goals in our company right now. The full day event was actually fantastic and really helped solidify my choice to work here!

I got to meet my colleagues from our project in other countries for the first time and similar to the previous segment, a group of us once again ended up out for the night in Amsterdam. It was good fun only to be followed on Saturday by a team BBQ outing south of Amsterdam for everyone to bring in their families for people to meet. It was really nice, but I was extremely tired after both days of having to be so social…you know me. I can only take so much before I need to go back into my shell and recover.

Last night my best roommate ever Gab was in town!!! (Well her and her husband are here for a couple of days, but we grabbed dinner together last night). It was SO great to see them, it’d been since I left for Europe since I had. But the most amazing thing is that they just moved to Atlanta, so now every time I go home to see the fam I can see them too!

Tomorrow night I have some family in town and am grabbing dinner with them. It’s been I don’t know how long since I’ve seen them, but it’ll be a fantastic night for dinner.

Then Saturday is PRIDE! (Although it started last weekend)The most insane massive parade in Amsterdam. Remember me telling you all about Kings Day? Apparently, Pride is even bigger. I’m not even sure I’m prepared for this at all, but stay tuned and keep an eye on my Insta story for minute by minute updates on the insanity!