Where’s Rohde?

There have been several phone calls and emails from customers wanting to know if I had gone on some wild adventure this year. The answer to that is it was wild and it definitely was an adventure, but not as educational or memorable as last years trip to Peru.

My daughter Assisi is graduating from Plano High School in the Spring of 2003, because of that I thought she should pick the vacation spot. Being a teenager, her pick was nowhere near where I wanted to go. I suggested Rome with a side trip to Assisi and Venice. Japan would be nice at this time, with fewer tourists and fairly comfortable walking weather. No and NO!

Amsterdam! She wanted to go to the Rijksmuseum and see paintings by Rembrandt and the Van Gogh Museum with all of his self-portraits and cornfields.

There was nothing more important to her than the canals that criss-cross this beautiful city. She wanted to see Ann Frank’s house and find out how she and her family were able to hide from the Germans for so long. She also hoped they would divulge the identity of the traitor that turned her family in.

Assisi had read about the Amsterdam Arboretum and knew that I would love going through the different greenhouses and gardens looking at plants from all over the world. Assisi wanted to see a working windmill to discover how these contraptions worked to keep lowlands from flooding. She seemed to have done some travel homework and knew a lot of places that would be of interest to Sandra and me.

We arrived in Amsterdam afternoon and went directly to our hotel - Holiday Inn. After putting our bags away, we immediately left to discover the city and the coffee bars. Funny thing about the Amsterdam coffee bars, there is hardly any coffee consumed there. But the coffee bars are full of young people of all ages, the young at heart having a great time taking up the smells of the various aromas wafting through the small, smoky joint.

Of all the joints in the world why would Assisi want to go in here?

Wait a second, did I say joint? Yes. These coffee bars are known for their marijuana tolerance. I immediately left this place with Victor and Sandra behind me.

But were was Assisi? She wanted to buy t-shirts and gag gifts just so she could tell her friends that she had been there, done that.

I was not mad, but I felt that this could not be the only reason we had gone to this amazing city. Later that afternoon, we took a canal cruise that took us through many interesting areas of Amsterdam. After the cruise we were hungry so we walked for a while, a very long while arguing about what foods we should eat. Victor wanted to eat at McDonalds, I was looking for typical Dutch food, Sandra was looking for the famous pancakes, and Assisi was looking for space cakes. My God, what has happened to this innocent young girl? We did settle for Dutch food, some stew filled crusty rolls. And then went to McDonalds so that Victor would eat something. We made it back to our hotel and with full stomachs slept from 9:00 pm until 11:30 the next morning.

Hungry, we went out looking for more food and found pancakes for Sandra. Not just any pancake, mind you, we are talking about the best pancakes in the world. Well, that is according to Sandra and believe me,she knows her pancakes. After this late breakfast, we spent our only rainy day in the museums and at Ann Frank’s house. After leaving Ann Frank’s house we were all feeling depressed, so Sandra suggested that we go eat more pancakes,-- to help lift our spirits at a place called The Pancake Bakery,just a block away. We were headed back to the hotel until I noticed that we were in the Red Light District. Yummy, I mean, oh my! How did we end up in this such a sinful area?? And how did we manage to stay in this area for over three hours? Some of you may think that I should not be in such an area, but, every year they go to Cancun where women wear fewer clothes than these girls in the window. Actually, the Red Light District was funner because of the way the workingwoman were flirting. Cancun is more risqué, women on vacation compete with each other as to who can show more skin.

The next morning, we were in search for another pancake house- this one called the Carousel, located conveniently across the street from the Heineken Museum. After finding out all but the secret ingredients for brewing this magnificent beer, we were given samples to enjoy! After that we decided that for sure our next stop was breakfast! These pancakes were so good that we all took our time to enjoy every bite. I must admit that this was the first time that I actually chewed thirty eight times before swallowing my specially prepared mixed fruit pancake (berries, banana, pineapple and apple). With every bite, I had fresh fruit. I am talking about one pancake that was 18 inches across filled with tons of fresh fruit. Now we had energy to go explore the countryside. We hopped on a train and traveled to a working Windmill. To our delight the Windmill was about a mile away from the our stop and we walked through a residential area with manicured lawns with plenty of color, many textures of leaves and varying height of plants giving the impression of a very large garden, when in fact they were no larger then a pick up truck. One lady who was working in her garden noticed that we were inspecting the landscapes on her block as we approached her house, she brushed the dirt off of her apron, tidied her hair and invited us to walk into her garden. Beautiful indeed, but as we turned around to walk out she motioned for us to look through her front window and gaze all the way towards the back of the house at her secret garden. Vines growing onto her fence with a multitude of colors appeared as a backdrop to her front yard.

We finally made it to the Windmill where we stayed for about an hour, even though it was interesting to see how it worked, we were all more excited about our walk back through the quaint neighborhood.

When we made it back to Amsterdam there was a fairly constant rainfall, so we went into Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum and spent the rest of the afternoon before heading out to enjoy the street entertainers. That night we ate at a Mexican restaurant making Victor very happy, again with a full stomach we went back to our hotel and packed our bags for our return trip the next morning.