a raccoon ate my pancake

Paris to Amsterdam Train. We decided long ago to avoid entirely renting cars on our trip. Much as I would like to enhance Lauren's driver education training with a study abroad portion, discretion has proven to be the better part of valor. We picked cities close enough to each other that we could, with one exception use trains to get between them. My biggest fear was -- and is -- hauling our oversized suitcases between locations. At the risk of brining on the wrath of the travel gods, I can report that our Paris to Amsterdam leg was relatively easy.

The most eventful part of our first train trip was Keri nearly getting into a fight with the woman who had her family camp out in the seats we had reserved between Brussels and Paris. Also, the skeptical ticket agent on the train asked why our extended passes had not been filled out and stamped. I apparently looked and sounded ignorant enough that he let us off the hook with a stern warning and a 100-euro payment that he said was to "activate" the passes we already paid for. I am pretty sure the guy extorted me.  And we got to sample in the Brussels train station two of Belgium's two great contributions to global cuisine -- fries and waffles.

Hotel Twenty-Eight Amsterdam. Keri had a dickens of a time finding a good place to stay here. Between cost and availability, there were a dearth of good options. At some point, she landed on Hotel Twenty-Eight, an apartment-style facility, with two-bedroom options. It is quite nice -- spacious, clean, modern, comfortable. Its only real drawback is its location, as it is a couple miles from city center. It turns out not to be a big deal, as we have Ubered into town to start off our days, but otherwise have found Amsterdam easy to navigate on foot.

Anne Frank House. We began Thursday morning at the Anne Frank House and museum. We visited on what would have been Anna's 90th birthday. I had been to the Anne Frank House in 1991. I recall there being virtually no museum, or at least one not one as extensive, with the self-guided audio tours they have today, accompanying you as you walk through some portions of the house where Anna, her parents, sister, and four others were hidden for more than two years.

There has been so much written and said about Anne Frank, that I hardly feel adequate to add anything of substance. I'll simply observe that she wrote so eloquently all she was going through, much having nothing to do with the Nazis and the Holocaust, but all of it happening in their shadow. We feel like we know her after reading her diary, and that makes her anxiety, her hopes, her death, all the more personal and all the more painful, as we see ourselves in her. It was certainly not inevitable that there would be an Anne Frank, through whom we could have this shared experience, and I'm grateful there was.

Rijksmuseum. The most famous museum in Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, is filled with Dutch art and history. The museum is divided into large chronological sections, but they are not in order, which upset slightly my sensibilities. As Dutch history did not begin in earnest until the late middle ages, the artifacts mostly consist of pieces of furniture and clothing, and other items that don't look all that unfamiliar to the modern eye. To my eye, the height of Dutch art was just before the age of impressionists, and covers the period of time when realism came into the fore. I am told that this rather impressive Rembrandt painting is called Night Watch. I was disappointed to see neither Jon Snow nor Ghost.

River Cruise. We caught the last river cruise of the day, figuring it was a good way to see the city while also avoiding the rain. The cruise audio described the canal system and provided some history of the city. It feels like a necessary thing as a tourist here, but I'm not sure how much we got out of our 90-minute cruise -- other than staying dry -- and those of you coming to Amsterdam should probably opt for a more interactive walking tour.

Asian Food and Pancakes. Our never ending search for gluten-free, dairy free meal options landed us in Mr. Sam, an excellent Asian fusion restaurant near our hotel the first night. The second night saw us scrambling, as we walked through a cold and intermittent rain, in search of an Italian restaurant with gluten-free pasta or at least a piece of fish. When that did not work out, we settled for what turned out to be a good Thai restaurant near Rembrandt Square. One of the best parts of traveling is having the kids try forcing the kids to try foods they might otherwise shy away from.

There was no arm twisting necessary to get any of us to try the local pancake scene, which we did for lunch. Gluten-free, even! Keri and I were relatively modest in our orders -- bananas and maple syrup (she added mango, too), while Lauren and Owen made sure to include chocolate in theirs. We thoroughly enjoyed having desert for lunch, and it gave us a chance to observe (again) how very different our children are -- Lauren, carefully distributing her chocolate, gently cutting and eating small, neatly cut pieces. Owen's platte, by contrast, had chocolate and ice cream each dropped out in one action, and appeared when he was done as though a wild raccoon had been given access to his plate.