We woke up early again and I brought my painting supplies with me. It’s much harder to paint on the go, my travel tray was a mess after closing it with wet water still inside. I think I’ll stick to painting at home where my OCD can be at rest. 😉

We walked through the flower market (which wasn’t opened yet). The shop at the very end had just started opening. There’s a sign that clearly says no photos but since we were literally the only ones around the guy was fine with it ha. So many pretty flowers! And The Netherlands has so many cute souvenirs! I had no idea what to choose.

Side story: A few years ago we visited Ryan’s parent’s new home and in their entryway they have a case full of very cool and unique souvenirs from all the places they’ve traveled to. Ryan and I were never big souvenir people, we had talked about how kitschy they are. But after seeing their case and all of them looked so good and authentic, we decided to start collecting our own collection of all the places we’ve traveled to. It’s been really fun adding them to our little bookcase and seeing all the amazing places Ryan and I have got to visit together!

We had a flight to Berlin late that night so we decided to spend the day in Muiden to see the castle. We went around asking all kinds of different tourist company employees how to get there but none of them really could tell us. We ended up figuring out that we take a certain bus to a stop and walk the 10 minutes up to the castle. We found the bus, bought tickets, and hopped on. The bus driver didn’t speak English (the first time we experienced it on the trip), but we showed him where we wanted to go and he let us know when to get off.

We were the only ones that got off the bus and we had no idea where to go next. We were in-between a main freeway and a parking lot and suddenly it started pouring! We sat on a covered bench for about 15 minutes and then decided to break for it while it had stopped. We finally figured out where we were going and come to find out, they had changed the bus stop and instead of a 10 minute walk it was an hour walk ha. We walked through the rain and through this little town. Finally we saw the castle and made our way up. We were the first people there (I’m not kidding about this country not being morning people! It was 9:00 by then!).

So many beautiful hydrangeas! And we thought this little car was funny.

Muiderslot is Dutch for Muiden Castle. We were so amazed by the castle. Neither been to a castle like this before, with a moat and drawbridge and everything so well preserved! Ryan was like a little kid again. We walked through the towers and on the guard floor, they had lots of fun interactive games and a video showing the history of the castle. It was first built in 1280 but after being conquered, was rebuilt in the fourteenth century. It was abandoned and then were restored in the late 1800’s and now a national museum. So amazing!

This lady was letting people hold giant owls and hawks! Ryan and I didn’t get a chance to hold them with all the families that showed up, but it was cool to see so close up.

Took some fun photos inside and made our way to the gardens. All the rain clouds were gone and it was as if it had never rained it was so beautiful outside!

We found out there was a much easier way to get back to Amsterdam, by ferry! We had officially used every type of transportation on the trip: plane, tram, train, bus, and boat. The wind started picking up again and we had a nice boat ride where they dropped us off south of Amsterdam, just a short tram ride up.

I am SO glad Ryan decided to figure out how to get to this castle, there were not much advertising for it but it was definitely one of our favorite parts of the trip! We took a bus to the airport, hopped on a plane, and an hour later we landed in Germany! Berlin post coming soon. 🙂