Holland's Opus with Edward and Jen

Edward and Jen were in for a double-blink awakening. And they knew it.

After spending a combined total of three high-class weeks practically bathing in the largess of Jen’s wealthy employer – which included business-class transatlantic flights, expensive dinners, and five-star lodging in the heart of Piazza del Popolo in Rome – this couple boarded a flight to Amsterdam where they’d meet up with us and shed their top hats and tails for cheap flats and trail mix. (And for some reason, funny glasses).

The weird part: they were happy about it. Does money really not buy happiness. Edward and Jen were about to find out.

We met at a cheap international budget hostel called the “International Budget Hostel” in a cute neighborhood in what could still barely be called the southwestern corner Amsterdam proper. The hostel was located directly off Prisengracht, one of the three main canals in Amsterdam that ring the old city. Like many things in Amsterdam, the hostel was tall, skinny, and overpriced – but well worth it!

The sibling reunion was celebrated by taking cues from the locals – eating Indonesian fast food (prevalent in the city thanks to the Dutch East Indian Company’s trading/migration routes with former Dutch colonies in Asia) getting poop stuck on your shoe (as seen above), trying on wooden shoes (below), and drinking Heineken beer (a local brew, of course).

The next day, Saturday, was sunny and warm. Kate, Jen, and I decided to leave the confines of the skinny roach motel as early as we could and tread down the street to the Anne Frank museum, which is housed in the actual building where Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank hid with her family from Nazi persecution for almost two years. Instead of a picture of that, here's the Heineken logo:

Although distressing in a poignant way, the museum tour was relatively quick and painless and almost made up for the lack of tact exhibited in the gift shop. To deal with the twinge of sorrow I’m sure we were all feeling afterward, we coped by eating some famous Dutch stroop waffles (syrup cookies). Yum!

Then, after meeting up with Edward, we decided to keep with the mantra of affordable tourism and opted for a short stroll in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark – the largest city park in Amsterdam loved by both locals (jogging, roller-skating, pushing prams) and tourists (sitting on benches, lazing in the grass) alike.

After benchwarming and gawking at the locals and their well dressed children, we stepped onto a small hop-on, hop-off canal boat. Here, I made friends with a very cute dog.

On the boat, we took a very nice tour around the city. And tour we did – from the flea market to the flower market to the festive food sites (we got Indonesian again), we hopped and bopped around the old canal city, really getting a feel for what it was like to be an Amsterdammer. The only thing that could have made us feel more authentically Amsterdammish that day is if we’d have rented bikes (the main mode of transportation) and stuck our fingers in some dykes (the dams, that is).

We finished Saturday by bumbling upon an old Dutch restaurant, looking at the menu, and deciding instead on the Chinese buffet next door, where I apparently ate more than Jen had ever seen consumed. And she had even been to Sea World once.

The next day we decided to ring in the spring by exploring the flower gardens of Keukenhof, located about 30 minutes south of Amsterdam.

Keukenhof was a great reprieve from the gray and cobbley corners of Amsterdam. And the fragrences! Can't you almost smell the flowers through the screen?

Anyway, I know I for one enjoyed Keukenhof very much and highly recommend it to anyone with a sense of smell and a penchant for smiling when looking at flowers. But, while the spirit-lifting infusion of color and fragrance certainly put springs in our steps that day, it prepared us poorly for the next five sedentary hours of driving back to Wiesbaden.