Girl's Trip: Amsterdam and Kiev

A couple weeks ago I got a chance to take a trip solo - ah, the luxury! However, I learned a few things. 1. You do not get any special attention when you are not with three cute little toddlers - HA! And 2. It's actually more exhausting to travel without kids - stay with me - during nap time we usually do something low key (coffee, late lunch, etc.) while they napped in the stroller and then with their bedtime at 7:30 pm we pretty much hung out in the room with wine and a movie. So not having these limiting factors (and a friend with more energy than me, hehe), it was a tiring, but amazing trip!

Amsterdam

We landed in Amsterdam around midday Tuesday and headed straight for Heineken after dropping off our bags and freshening up. It was surprisingly fun and kicked off our trip nicely. Afterwards we headed over to Foodhallen. Soooo delicious!

Wednesday morning we made our way over to Keukenhof to see the flowers. We visited towards the end of the tulips season, but it was still a spectacular site. We enjoyed spending the morning walking around and I tried my hand at taking shots of the flowers. (More pictures are on my Facebook album.)

After lunch we headed to the Van Gogh Museum. It was an amazing collection and a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. We grabbed dinner and enjoyed the unusually hot weather by walking through Vondelpark.

After trying the traditional Dutch breakfast of toast and chocolate sprinkles, we headed towards Central Amsterdam to catch a canal cruise. It was a nice way of seeing the city and getting some of the history.

We slowly walked back towards our hotel to drop off some shopping we did along the way and headed to The Avocado Show. We had a delicious avocado-full lunch!

Afterwards we headed to the Rijksmuseum and then re-visited Foodhallen for our last meal in the city.

Kiev

Our flight to and from Baku went through Kiev so on the return we decided to book a long layover and spend the day in the city. We did a lot of walking and enjoyed the beautiful weather in the city.

We started by visiting the Rodina Mat (Motherland) statue and Perchersk Lavra. While walking around we also did the Caves Monastery and the Mykola Syadristy Microminiatures Museum.

We caught a taxi across town to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). We walked around the square, grabbed lunch, and then made our way towards Andriyivski Uzviz seeing St. Michael's Cathedrale and Saint Sophia Cathedral en route.

We shopped for souvenirs and then caught a taxi back to the airport. It was a whirlwind, but so fun and hopefully I can visit again and spend more time there!