Amsterdam Overview

rembrant's house

yummy

look at all those bikes

gross bugs did this

touture museum

our view from our hotel

us in the red light district

our room

our room

our room

great food

train station

when we landed in amsterdam, we needed to start looking for a hat for my brother, Jack. we saw something upstairs that might have what we needed. as we were walking down this hallway, all of a sudden, I slipped. there was a huge puddle of water on the floor that poured out of the ceiling (it was raining outside). it looked like someone had started working on it, but i guess they don't put any signs up to say "wet floor". i was ok, just minor bruising, but nothing i hadn't had from before. we didn't find what we needed, so we continued on to getting our bags and heading to our hotel. we headed to the train station to get to the city center. we thought we read the signs correctly (in dutch), but we ended up in the very north of amsterdam. we got off the train as soon as we figured out where we were, and figured out which train would take us to the city center. the train station was so pretty. (the last picture) when we arrived at our hotel, it wasn't ready for us, yet. we dropped off our bags and grabbed a bite to eat. that baguette was so good.

our hotel was very cute, and had so many images that were just crazy looking. it was a very fun hotel/hostel. i've also added some pictures of our room. as soon as we got settled (throwing our bags down and taking a shower), we headed out to see the sights. we ended up walking down through the red light district (which was about a 2 second walk from our hotel), and looking around. we hit a few pubs and just walked around until we were tired. the next morning, we got on a canal bus tour, where we could get on and off as much as we wanted for the entire day. that's when we saw the rijksmuseum and the van gough museum (which we couldn't take any pictures at). while we were walking around town, we saw this building (which wasn't open yet) that was for an 80 minutes horror/haunted house ride. i was terrified (i think they can touch you to scare you here), so i didn't want to go. but,we also found the torture museum, which we did go in that night. afterwards, we went pub hopping. i wasn't aware that the pubs closed at 1am, but you can still drink in the sex shows and other clubs. we thought that was odd. all the people in that bar (in our hotel) were kicked out at 1am. as you walk around the red light district, the streets literally light up with red lights. if you try to take pictures of the girls, they seem to have it choreographed to close their curtains all at the same time. it was pretty weird. everyone here rides bikes. there are more bicycles than cars. i've included a picture of all the bikes (3 stories, just like a parking garage here).

the next day, we went walking around everywhere. we walked to this little flea market (nothing to buy, it was just like ours here). we stopped off at this little coffee place, the was right across from Rembrandt's house (the green house with little red shutters). it was very cute, but nothing special). after our little break, we headed over to vondelpark. it was such a cute park, it was pretty big. people rode their bikes, and played with their dogs walked around and bird watched. we finished our bottle of wine and started walking around. there are so many beautiful trees around. there were a few trees that were taken over by creeping little worms, that in cased the trees in this white nest looking thing. when i was looking at the trees, i almost ran into the pile of worms that were on the post right next to my hip. i started to freak out. if you know me, you know i hate bugs!!!