Limerick

Hello friends,

Maggie here, again... So Ireland has been wonderful so far but I'll start with Amsterdam. We were there for one whole day, two nights. The first night we just walked around and found a restaurant, didn't stay out too long because it was so cold. The next day we went on a walking tour and learned some of the city's history which was quite interesting. My favorite part was when the guide, Amy, told us about Louis Bonaparte. He was Napoleon's brother, and was appointed as king of the Netherlands in 1806 by Napoleon. She told us that he only did two major things in Holland as King (before Napoleon fired him.) He made all buildings have address numbers, instead of just having a plaque in front of the house to identiy who lives there. And the second thing he did was make all the Dutch people have surnames, because too many people had the same names. The Dutch people thought it was stupid becasue they were getting along just fine, so some of them came up with ridiculous names, like "Pile of Pants," "Born Naked," "Little S***," or "Hardly ever at home" (in Dutch of course) to show Louis they thought it was stupid. But Loius didn't speak Dutch so he didn't know what they meant anyway, and apparently some people in Holland still have these ridiculous last names, so it kind of backfired.

So after the walking tour we went to a restaurant with the guide and a few other people and had a traditional Dutch meal of sausage and mashed potatoes. It was pretty good. Heather had seconds on the sausage... Then we went to the Anne Frank House which was really interesting. You get to walk through the house and they have it set up how it was so you go behind a book case and climb up the super steep steps to get to the hidden rooms. There were also videos of Otto Frank, her dad, and Miep Gies, a woman who helped them hide. It was pretty crazy.

After that we went on another walking tour, this one of the Red Light District, which is where our hostel was. It was pretty interesting. So that was a full day, and then the next morning we left for Ireland.

Yesterday (our first whole day here) Heather and I did pretty much nothing, and it was nice. We hung around the house with Mike, did our laundry, and that was about it. Lily is in South Africa right now so it is just Mike at the house. Their daughter Lisa stopped by the house yesterday with her son Shane. He's 3 and super cute with his little Irish accent.

Today Mike drove us into Limerick where we walked around and went into some stores and whatnot. Then we took a taxi back to Patrickswell (where their house is) and found a pub that Mike recommended and watched the big Ireland/France rugby game. France won 30-10, but it was still cool watching it in a pub with people who were super into it.

Not sure what we're doing tomorrow, maybe just relax again, or go into town again.

That's all for now.

Peace.