Amsterdam, 2016: Early Planning

In 2016 we're celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary, so we were thinking that we'd do a special trip of some kind. We felt a little decadent since we did a week in Rome earlier this year, but we've decided to do our traveling while we're healthy enough to enjoy it, so we opted for a second "big trip."

Our first thoughts were another European river cruise, but the as we talked about it, we thought more and more about the great time we had last year in Amsterdam before leaving on our Vantage river cruise. So we decided that our special anniversary trip would be a week in Amsterdam.

Our first thought was to stay at the great canal-side B&B we stayed at last year, misc eatdrinksleep. Unfortunately, when we contacted Rachel and Pepijn, the place was booked up for early June and we were forced to look elsewhere. After searching TripAdvisor and other sites, we found another B&B--right across the canal from misc eatdrinksleep--that had great ratings. So we made our reservations for Tulip of Amsterdam. Like misc eatdrinksleep, it's located in an old canal house near the Nieumarkt Square.

After that we found flights on American going through Philadelphia, leaving on Sunday, June 19 and returning on Monday, June 27. Our plan is to use Amsterdam as a base of operations and make day trips using buses and trains to see the places in the Netherlands that appeal to us.