With frozen fingers, she writes...

It is sooo icy here, it's almost unbearable. I was going to buy a new scarf that was huge and woolly and blue, but it was too big!

I'm still in Amsterdam, we're going on to Dublin tomorrow. Since my last post, I've been to the Van Gogh museum, which has most of his paintings. They are just amazing, brilliant colours and such a unique style. It's incredible to think that he did all his work in such a short life - only 37 years.

We then went to the Rijksmuseum, which is an art gallery with all the paintings from the Dutch Golden Age (think Rembrandt and Vermeer - Girl With the Pearl Earring guy). It was amazing to see all these paintings in their natural environment...

strangest thing I've seen in Amsterdam:
A really posh, massive old canal house, with sweeping staircase, beautiful Christmas decorations. And then, at the top of the stairs, a massive life-size model of Darth Vader, with lightsaber pointed at the door. Hilarious.

Strangest experience while on holidays: The hard-won beans:
We spent ages in Paris searching for this cafe Chatier, which we always eat at in Paris. We of course had forgotten the address. All Mum remembered was the nearest metro station, called 'Rue Montmatre.' Except that there was no Rue Montmatre metro station. We spent an hour searching up and down this boulevard for it. Then we found Chatier, and were told to leave by a very ancient looking waitress. Chatier was ''closed for exceptional circumstances.'' We eventually were allowed to sit down, and discovered the ''exceptional circumstances'' were one of the waitresses screaming abuse at about 20 seated waiters. We tried to order, but the ancient waitress was very grumpy, and almost refused to let my mother order a side dish of green beans. My mum got into a fight with her (in her schoolgirl french)...but we eventually got the beans.

Hope everyone else is having interesting holidays

With frozen fingers, she writes...

It is sooo icy here, it's almost unbearable. I was going to buy a new scarf that was huge and woolly and blue, but it was too big!

I'm still in Amsterdam, we're going on to Dublin tomorrow. Since my last post, I've been to the Van Gogh museum, which has most of his paintings. They are just amazing, brilliant colours and such a unique style. It's incredible to think that he did all his work in such a short life - only 37 years.

We then went to the Rijksmuseum, which is an art gallery with all the paintings from the Dutch Golden Age (think Rembrandt and Vermeer - Girl With the Pearl Earring guy). It was amazing to see all these paintings in their natural environment...

strangest thing I've seen in Amsterdam:
A really posh, massive old canal house, with sweeping staircase, beautiful Christmas decorations. And then, at the top of the stairs, a massive life-size model of Darth Vader, with lightsaber pointed at the door. Hilarious.

Strangest experience while on holidays: The hard-won beans:
We spent ages in Paris searching for this cafe Chatier, which we always eat at in Paris. We of course had forgotten the address. All Mum remembered was the nearest metro station, called 'Rue Montmatre.' Except that there was no Rue Montmatre metro station. We spent an hour searching up and down this boulevard for it. Then we found Chatier, and were told to leave by a very ancient looking waitress. Chatier was ''closed for exceptional circumstances.'' We eventually were allowed to sit down, and discovered the ''exceptional circumstances'' were one of the waitresses screaming abuse at about 20 seated waiters. We tried to order, but the ancient waitress was very grumpy, and almost refused to let my mother order a side dish of green beans. My mum got into a fight with her (in her schoolgirl french)...but we eventually got the beans.

Hope everyone else is having interesting holidays