Amsterdam

July 22

we arrived at the hotel ... very nice place, far better than London. it's outside of town near the airport, has escalators and a diner, and buffet-style dinner for us. several different choices and good food for the most part. went to town and got on the boat for our canal cruise. learned earlier that Amsterdam has more canals than Venice and after seeing the map i believe it. our cruise included drinks and cheese, rock music, and funny guides who didn't really guide us so much as drive us. but it was really fun and relaxing and beautiful. Amsterdam really is a beautiful city, though the Red Light District gives it a bad rap. we didn't see much as it wasn't dark yet, but we did see the "coffeehouse" sign ... we were told the different between a coffeehouse and a cafe. a cafe is where you'd go to socialize over a cup of coffee and some nibblies. a coffeehouse, on the other hand, is a drug house. a place you go to legally buy drugs, smoke or shoot them up, and maybe do other things i would know nothing about.

lots of skinny houses ... they used to have to pay tax on the amount of space the house took up on the canal, so the Dutch got smart and built deep and tall instead of wide, so all the houses are skinny, but big. there are TONS of bikes. i mean, TONS. everyone has a bike. and they're all like "mary poppins" bikes ... just the old style and upright. everyone rides with straight backs. it's funny. there was actually a parking garage FULL of bikes ... amazing. in the chain of transportation here, cars and buses are first, then bikes, and then pedestrians. so if you're walking the street and a bike or a car is coming, they are VERY unlikely to stop for you. and we saw proof of that when waiting in like at Anne Frank's house. a girl seriously got hit by a bike. she was ok, but it scared her enough to stay on the sidewalk from now on.

speaking of which ... the next morning we got up and went to town at 8:30 a.m. and had our free time. a bunch of us went to see Anne Frank's house. got there and waited in line for 1.25 hours. the house/museum was interesting, humbling, and took a while to go through. there were snippits from her diary on walls throughout. you enter nextdoor and eventually end up in the house. we all took our time and enjoyed it, but a couple of times i almost started crying. hard not to in a place with such sad history.

afterward we walked around, got some lunch, and made our way back to our pickup spot by 12:45. not a whole lot of time to do other things like the Van Gogh museum, for example, but still it was nice to have time this morning to do things in town.

i really liked this city and would have liked to spend more time here, especially if sex and drugs weren't so prevalent.