The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Fredericus Franciscus Xaverius Marie Dieudonné Thomas was born in Amsterdam in 1906 and lived there at Prinsengracht 505, where a special plaque commemorates him. Fred Thomas was a journalist and writer and had been working as a journalist at the De Tijd newspaper since 1929. He was particularly interested in the fate of the residents around the closed Zuiderzee and for many years he was secretary of the National Committee for the Conservation of the Zuiderzee and chairman of the Red Volendam foundation.

See http://www.schoklanddoordeeeuwenheen.nl/fred-thomas-1906-1959.htm

My guess is that the owner of this house was either in the shipping business or was a boat captain.

I have not figured out what the word “Wout” means. It looks like the guy is gathering firewood though.

UPDATE: Wout means cop. It’s like a nickname for a police officer. 👮 But, Het Groene Wout is old Dutch for The Green Forest. Now spelled as Het Groene Woud. With a D.

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.