Herbstferien

Finally, a minute to update what I have been up to lately. We have 2 weeks of holidays right now, and last week I took off to Amsterdam. I went with Sarah, Cara and Cara's friend Johanna. We had a great time exploring the city, even though it rained most of the time we were there. We enjoyed wandering around the canals and bridges, shopping, checking out museums and eating! We went to the Rijksmuseum (sadly much was closed for construction), Van Gogh Museum and I went to the Anne Frank Museum. On the day we left the sun finally came out and we were able to sit outside and enjoy some hot drinks.

Bikes, canals and skinny buildings!

Church near Anne Frank's house

What the weather was like...

Cheese! This shop had amazing samples of cheese, chocolate and waffles :)

I AMsterdam sign: Johanna, Sarah, me and Cara

On top of the A

On the balcony of the amazing library.

We wanted to take this library back with us to Frankfurt. It was beautifully designed,seemed to have so many books and resources, and had a cafeteria with this balcony. 

Panoramic view of the city. The blueish building to the left is Nemo, the science centre.

Pretending to be in Spain (ie. somewhere warm) - enjoying tapas and sangria

Amsterdam bicycles, room for at least 3 people!

The skinny bridge

Night view

Check out the shite SUVs parking - apparently every year a certain number of cars fall into the canals...

Many bridges over the canals

A bike parking garage! I have no clue how you would ever find your bike in there

And the sun finally came out, as we headed to our train.

On Thursday, as we headed back to Frankfurt my Dad's cousin Haydn came to visit from England. He came for a weekend and so I got to play tourist in Frankfurt again. On Thursday I headed up to Friedrichsdorf to meet him for dinner at his hotel.

On Friday we had lunch at my place and then took a quick tour of my school. After that the sight seeing began. We say the main sights of Frankfurt (Römerberg, Dom, Main, Alte Oper, Zeil ... ) before a dinner at the Galeria Kaufhof cafeteria. We were there just as the sun was setting and were treated to an amazing sunset. The lower sky went bright orange. It looked very picturesque with the dark skyscrapers in front. 

Saturday we spend the afternoon first in the Archaeology museum and then the Goethe House museum. My favourite part of the Archaeology museum were the early 16th C frescoes in the Karmelite cloister. Haydn and I spend quite a while in there working on our German to figure out what each story was. The Goethe museum was also great. The building itself is a recreation of the one where Goethe grew up. The furnishings are all period pieces, with some of them having been original to the Goethe family. My favourite was the desk they had - one of the desks that opens up and has all kinds of organization draws and shelves :)

Sunday afternoon we took a short Main river tour. The boat cruise was an hour and took us both up and down the river. All the way they had announcements giving little bits of information about the landmarks and the city. The sun was shining and it was nice to be on the boat deck soaking up the warmth! 

Today I was back at work. While this week is still the Herbstferien, I have to work at the holiday camps. Cara and I are running a Food camp. We only have 4 students though! Today we learned about food around the world, healthy food and restaurant etiquette. We ended up with pretending to go to a restaurant :) Now the kids want to do it again, but with real food! Later in the week we will be baking and cooking, so will have to recreate our restaurant.