Mostly Delicious Food In Amsterdam

I liked trying new foods in Amsterdam.

A box of the best chocolate sprinkles I ever tasted

They had chocolate sprinkles, called chocoladehagelslag. We call them "jimmies" at home. Chocoladehagelslag actually taste like chocolate. At home, jimmies are just waxy sugar sprinkles colored brown. Dutch people eat chocoladehagelslag on toast for breakfast. I liked that!

Also at breakfast, I tried yummy white cheese, whose flavor I can't describe. I call it "pepper cheese" in my head because I never found out its real name. It looks like it has bits of ground pepper in it. The Dutch eat this cheese on toast, too (although not with chocolate sprinkles!)

I enjoyed cookies called stroopwaffles. The "waffle" part is  
a thin sugar cookie made on a waffle iron. Then two waffles are squished together with a layer of caramel.  We always had some with us because they were easy to carry around and they made a good snack!

We wanted to try black licorice because we had heard it was good. When we finally found some in a grocery store, we thought, "Let's buy it!" It tasted like gummy molasses without the sugar. We were disappointed. I didn't like it that much. Neither did Kayla, Mommy, or Joy. Daddy didn't even try it! 

Delicious Dutch chocolates

On the other hand, Dutch chocolates are good--very good. In one chocolate shop, they served us our chocolates on little plates, and we sat down at a cafe table to eat them. Mommy drank an espresso with her chocolates. Joy and I had milk with ours. I had one that was flavored with green tea and lemongrass, and another that was chocolate and cinnamon. A lot of the chocolates I wanted to try had alcohol in them, though, so I couldn't eat them!  

More delicious Dutch chocolates

Lots of places sold a chocolate milk called Chocomel. That's yummy, too! It makes a good pick-me-up whenever you get tired. I had it at Keukenhof Gardens, Vondel Park, and with lunch while out and about. 

One night, we ate vlaamse frites -- Dutch for French fries -- for dinner! We had them with mayonnaise and Andalouse sauce, which is made with mayonnaise, ketchup or tomato paste, and spicy paprika. It was a good picnic dinner to eat along one of Amsterdam's many canals.

A Good Day at Keukenhof

Mommy, Daddy, Joy (my little sister), Kayla, and I took a bus to the famous Keukenhof gardens. To get to the bus stop, we had to take another bus! The line for the Keukenhof bus was so long that by the time we boarded it, there was almost no space left. Joy and I got to sit down, but not Mommy and Daddy. Lucky for the people who did not make it onto our crowded bus (but unlucky for us), another bus came around the corner for them. Oh well. If Mommy and Daddy hadn't made us rush, all of us would have gotten seats.

One of the interesting flowers in the greenhouse

Surprisingly, the first thing we did when we arrived was not to go look at the flowers, it was to get something to eat! I got a cranberry and white chocolate cookie, and Mommy and Joy shared an almond pastry called a Gevulde Koek.

Then we went to explore the gardens. I was hoping for postcard-quality fields of tulips, but when we saw them, we saw lots of green. Darn. We were visiting too early in the season. Next, we went inside a greenhouse where there were so many different, interesting, colorful flowers that we decided that that was our amazing tulip fields.    

Me, jumping on the zipline

I realized the map showed a playground. Hurray! Hurray! I love playgrounds! We had to go there. The European ones are usually more challenging (and more fun) than the American ones. This one had ropes to climb on, bars to dangle from, and a zipline you sit on to ride. Climbing around on the ropes made me feel like I was on top of the world.

The bus ride back to Amsterdam was less crowded than the one we took to get to the gardens, so that meant everyone in my family got seats. That was good because after walking around for the whole day, we needed to sit down! 

Kayla's Beauty Day

Kayla getting her hair styled

After brunch at American Girl Place, Mommy and I went to get Kayla's hair styled at the Doll Beauty Salon. They had a whole catalog of hairstyles you could choose for your doll, as well as play spa treatments like foam cucumbers for your doll's eyes. Kayla wanted her hair styled and her ears pierced. We decided on a style called the Ponytail Veil. It's like a little crown of ponytails. It's very pretty! 

When the hairdresser called out, "Taryn?" we walked over to meet her. First, Kayla got her ears pierced. The stylist took her into a room, and she came out with pierced ears! Then the stylist asked me to choose two different colors of ribbon and rubber bands for Kayla's hairstyle. I chose pink and black rubber bands, and light green and blue ribbons. The stylist started dividing Kayla's hair into small, thin ponytails, and before I knew it, Kayla had a cute new hairstyle!

After that, Mommy and I took Kayla on a
shopping spree. Her favorite new outfit is 
a magenta dress with purple stripes and raspberry glasses.

Kayla modeling her dress, hairstyle, and glasses

The Biggest Candy Store Ever

One of  Mommy's chocolate bar wrappers

It was Sunday, our last day in New York, but there was still time to do fun stuff. At around 1:00 p.m., Mommy and I took a bus to Dylan's Candy Bar. (If you can't guess what we were doing, we were buying candy.)

Dylan's Candy Bar is three floors tall, but the top floor is more of a cafeteria. The bottom floor was where Mommy and I did our shopping. It had a chocolate fountain, wall after wall of candy, souvenirs, T-shirts, and even dog treats. I chose jelly beans in eight flavors: coconut, raspberry, caramel corn, toasted marshmallow, strawberry cheesecake, pear, lemon-lime, and mango. They were so good! Mommy chose two Belgian dark chocolate bars.

Then I asked Mommy if I could walk around the floor for a bit. But the floor was bigger than either of us thought. Suddenly, I couldn't find her!

I asked an employee wearing bunny ears (it was Easter that day) who had helped us earlier, if she could help me find my mom. She did, and we were reunited by the wall of rainbow colored candies. We both thanked her a lot. Phew.

The wall of rainbow colored candies

10th Birthday Brunch in New York

In New York City, my mom and I woke up early to go to American Girl Place for brunch.

American Girl Place is five stories tall! What can they put in a five story doll store?

We ate brunch at 9:30. Even Kayla got a seat! We had mini cinnamon rolls for an amuse bouche (French for "appetizer"). While we were waiting for the rest of the food, Mommy discovered a basket full of discussion questions. For example: if you could choose three girls in books to be friends with, who would you choose?

Kayla, that's my Shirley Temple!

The questions entertained us until the rest of our food came--a quiche for Mommy, French toast with strawberries for me. I drank a Shirley Temple, which is a virgin cocktail with lemon lime soda and grenadine syrup. So yummy! Mommy sipped a mimosa (a grown-up drink with champagne and orange juice).

Too many choices, so little time...

When we had finished our food the waitress gave us each a BIG piece of cake, along with some vanilla ice cream in mini-flowerpots. Everyone sitting near our table, the waiters and waitresses, and Mommy sang "Happy Birthday" to me.

Mommy and I couldn't finish our cake because we were too full!  We ended up just taking it back to the apartment/hotel and eating it for lunch. With our fingers!

Happy birthday to me!

Will we get home?

I remember when we were in Istanbul, about to board one of our flights home(we had a layover in Germany). My mom gave our passports to a person behind the counter so we could get on the flight. But when he saw my dad's passport, he called over a woman who was also working behind the counter. 

He pointed at my dad's passport, and they started whispering to each other. 

They called over another woman, pointed at the passport, and whispered to her. She whispered back. By then we were really worried. 

What if there was something wrong with the passport? What if we would be stuck in Istanbul forever? 

But it turned out they were just whispering and pointing because my dad's name is the same as the airline. How funny is that? The man gave us our passports back. In the end, we got on the flight.