This past weekend, my friend Meghan and I took a quick trip to Amsterdam. We left Thursday night after work and got home Monday evening, so we truly just popped in for a long weekend.

Amsterdam and the Netherlands had been on our list of places we wanted to visit for a long time now, and when Icelandair had one of their silly cheap sales, we couldn't pass up the opportunity.

With our $380 plane tickets in hand, we jetted across the pond to eat delicious food and explore the gorgeous city of Amsterdam.

We landed later on Friday than planned after experiencing a few delays because of the weather, but we really easily made our way from the airport to our hotel and then set off for an evening walk around the city.

Pretty much right away we were captivated by all the beautiful canals.



We also learned pretty quickly that we had to double and triple check for bicycles before crossing the street. It was kind of cool to see so many people getting around by bike. But also slightly terrifying as a pedestrian because bikers seemed to come out of nowhere.

Our first meal in the city was a giant waffle smothered in Nutella and strawberries. It was amazing.



The highlight of our Friday evening was probably exploring the floating flower market. Tulips are my favorite flowers, and the ones at the market were gorgeous. I really wanted to bring some bulbs home. Some vendors sell bulbs you can safely bring through U.S. Customs, but unfortunately when we were there, there were none available.

We started off our Saturday morning wandering through the quaint Jordaan neighbor on our way to the Anne Frank house.

We passed lots of house boats and of course enjoyed more of the views from the bridges over the canals.



The Anne Frank House was a really moving museum. To see the place in real life that I remember reading about as a child was interesting. As a kid, I think I pictured the rooms where the Frank family stayed to be much smaller than that actually were. That's not to say that the rooms were actually big in real life, but they were bigger than what my little-kid self imagined.



We also indulged in a fun canal boat cruise on Saturday to see the city from the waterways.



We followed up our busy morning with a delicious lunch of Amsterdam's famous fries.



As you can see, I ate extremely healthy food on this trip.

That afternoon we spent more time walking around the city eventually making our way to the Red Light District. It was a trip (not because I took drugs). Taking pictures of any of the workers is a big no, no, so I will leave you with this picture of a sculpture we saw on the ground. It's definitely exactly what you think it is.



The other cool thing we stopped to do in the Red Light District is visit the museum of Our Lord in the Attic Church. Back in the day, Catholicism wasn't really allowed to be practiced openly in the Netherlands, so people used to build secret churches in the back of their houses.



This was a pretty cool tour through one such house church. One minute you're just walking through a kitchen and then next thing you know, you go up a set of steps and boom you're in a pretty sizeable church that no one could see from the outside.

After exploring the holy and the unholy in the Red Light District, we decided it was time for more of Amsterdam's tasty treats.

Enter the stroopwaffle.



We wrapped up our first full day in Amsterdam with a stroll through Vondelpark. It's basically Amsterdam's version of Central Park.



Then we walked a few blocks to the Van Gogh museum. They happened to have a special exhibit on Van Gogh's Japanese inspiration, and since I was just in Japan, I found it pretty cool.



After dinner at the Heinken pub, we collapsed into bed.

Fitbit stats for Saturday:
20,768 steps
8.79 miles

After being sick for the first three weeks of May, I was really excited when I finally started feeling better after a heavy course of antibiotics and steroids to shrink my ridiculously swollen tonsils.

The timing worked well too because a few days after getting the new medicine, I was off on a work trip to Minneapolis. I started feeling better just in time to squeeze in a gorgeous morning run across the Mississippi.



The weather was perfect when I left my hotel, in the mid-60s with no humidity.

I kept a fairly even pace for most of the run, though I stopped a few times to snag some pictures.

The Mississippi River was about a mile from my hotel, so I ran there and crossed over the Stone Arch bridge.

I got some really nice views of St. Anthony's Falls before heading south toward the campus of the University of Minnesota.



I ran through campus a bit and found my way back across another bridge into Minneapolis again.



I wasn't completely sure the fastest way to get back to my hotel, so I plugged my address in Google Maps and the directions took me right past U.S. Bank stadium -- the site of the Eagle's first ever Super Bowl victory.



I obviously had a little moment there.

The run was just shy of five miles, the longest distance I've run in a really long time. It was such a great way to see the city. And Minneapolis was such a beautiful city.

I was impressed how very green it was. It seemed to be full of parks and lakes. I didn't have a car on the trip, so I mainly stayed in and around the downtown area, but I loved how easily walkable the city seemed to be (at least where I was staying).



If Minneapolis weren't so ridiculously cold and snow-covered in the winter, I would have considered moving there in a heartbeat.



The city clearly made quite the impression!

Hi friends. Sorry I fell off the face of the Earth there for a while. I got sick a couple of weeks ago and spent a lot of time on my sofa eating chicken noodle soup. The cough is still hanging around a few weeks later and with allergies leaving my throat scratchy on the regular, I pretty much have not been doing a whole lot in the way of workouts in May.

But despite my sickness/allergies, I packed a bag (full of allergy medication and cough syrup) and headed to the beach for the weekend.


Is there a better place on Earth than the beach? If there is, I don't know what it is.

We got really lucky with the weather both Friday and Saturday. It was warm during the days and got nice and cool at night, which was perfect since we were camping.

We camped at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware, which is about 8 miles up the road from where my family normally vacations.

The park itself was pretty awesome. They have a beach you can lounge on (obviously my favorite part of the trip), a place to rent kayaks and SUPs, a place with free bike rentals and tons of paved bike paths and some trails in the woods for walking.

Fort Miles is also located in the park and you can take a tour of one of the underground bunkers used during World War II. The tour was pretty cool and a fun way to mix up our camping activities.



Our first night there we grilled dinner over the campfire and made smores, but the second night, we decided to head into town and grab dinner and ice cream on the boardwalk. It was the perfect mix of a camping trip and a beach trip. 



I've never done beach camping before, but after this trip, I think it's by far the best kind of camping around.

1. First, you're at the beach, which as declared above is the best place on Earth.
2. The ground is pretty flat, which is ideal for tent camping since you don't have to worry about tree roots or rocks jabbing you in the back while sleeping.
3. You don't really have to worry about being eaten by a bear at the beach like you do when you camp in the woods.
4. You're not that far from civilization -- so if you forget something (like we did), you aren't very far away from a place to buy what you need.

The only downside I discovered was that when a fierce summer thunderstorm rolls in at night while you're camping, your only option is to sleep in your car. The last place you want to be is in a tent where a tree could call down and crush you.

That's what we had to do Saturday night when one of those thunderstorms hit. Initially the radar made it seem like the storm would pass by midnight, but when we woke up at 2 a.m. it was still storming. Things eventually calmed by 3 a.m., so we dug the tent back out of the car and set it up again and slept the rest of the night in the tent. It was not the best night's sleep I've ever had, but I was just grateful to not have to spend the whole night sleeping in the car.

Honestly, it didn't put that much of a damper on the weekend, and this quick beach trip made me so excited for my longer beach trip later this summer.