The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

It’s time for another”30 days of” series. Unfortunately, Facebook will no longer allow posts to be automatically shared from WordPress, so if you see this via Facebook, come back over the next 30 days to see the other posts.

Gable stones (gevelstenen) are carvings, set into the walls of some of the buildings in Amsterdam, usually placed in the center of the building above the ground floor. They started around the 16th century and are still created today. They usually indicate what the owner of the building does for a living, but not always.

Today’s gable stone is for the name of a cat that lived at this house. The cat was named Maximilian. To read about that, see: http://www.amsterdamsegrachtenhuizen.info/gracht/kge/kge200/kg04166/?tx_sbtab_pi1%5Btab%5D=1

On the west side of Amsterdam, you can pick apples, all sorts of berries and even chicken eggs. We only gathered a few apples though. Our friends with young kids have been a few times and were quite used to the extra strange experience of cooking bread on a stick. Most people had burned dough, but we saw a couple of pieces that looked edible.

I wasn’t quick enough with the camera, but the Heineken wagon, which is pulled by two Clydesdale horses, went in front of our door as I was walking out. I could hear them, before I saw them, as I was walking up to the door.

They just tour around the city. You can read about them here: https://www.theheinekencompany.com/about-us/the-heineken-stables

We took advantage of a 14 hour layover in Toronto to go see Niagara Falls, which neither of us had seen before.

I had the opportunity to tour the trainer for the Space Shuttle at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

I don’t know who the artist is, but it is posted outside of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

I think this is the right bridge as featured in the painting, so I tried to frame the photo to match.

We went to the train museum in Utrecht today, Spoorwegmuseum.

If you are a transport nerd, you’ll enjoy it. We did!

I

also have a video of a steam train that they got working while we were there. See:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GgS8Rv3EnTQFpy2h6