Dear Pandas,

Ella got the idea into her head to get a pair of these funny, wooden shoes, so off we went to Holland, the birthplace of funny, wooden shoes.

That’s not completely true, Max. The country is called The Netherlands. Holland is only a part of it.

Okay, whatever. I was talking about the shoes.

Oh, the shoes! I saw a pair recently in a fashion magazine and just had to get a pair. Apparently they are very ‘in’ at the moment.

We took the train and headed straight to a souvenir shop, right on the border. There was also a cheese shop nearby. The Dutch are known world-wide for their cheeses. But Ella didn’t want cheese. She needed those shoes. She stormed right into the shop, plopped herself down and requested a pair in her size. Boy, did they look funny! She looked like some kind of gnome!

What are you talking about? They looked wonderful! Too bad they weren’t so uncomfortable…

Exactly! Do you Pandas want to know what happened afterwards? We had to go running back to the train station to catch our train, but Ella could only scoot around at a snail’s pace. Or like a little duck! She was so slow that we ended up missing our train!

It was the last train of the day and it was growing dark outside. We decided to go back to the souvenir shop and ask the shop keepers if they knew of a place we could stay. They invited us to stay at their place – apparently they had a sleeper couch we could use in the living room. Ella really didn’t want to share the couch with me, but we didn’t have a choice.

Something kinda funny happened, but I’ll tell you Pandas later.

Be good Pandas,

Max and Ella