We left early Wednesday morning and that put us into Amsterdam about lunch time. First thing off the plane this is what I saw (took this just for your Carol).
We got all checked into the hotel and into our room. Wanna see something funny? This is the room we were in!
No really, I can't make that up!After a little nap (for some reason Kyle and I get SOO tired after being on a plane - even for just a couple of hours) we headed out to look around. I found my preferred food for this location - the chocolate covered Belgium waffle: Kyle got one with sprinkles - and we continued walking around. We found our way to their Banhofstrasse (Rodeo Drive) and walked around there a little bit.
We found a comic book store that was selling Obama bobbleheads (I think I broke his head off...oops!) so we stopped in and did some window shopping. I couldn't help but take a picture of this!
The summer after 4th grade my friend, Lori Neves, and I rented this movie and watched it on a rainy night while we were living in an apartment over by Best Buy. I'm not sure we got all the way through it because it was really creepy. To this day it's still one of my favorite - but still super creepy - movies.
After the shopping (we bought nothing) we found the Dam Hotel. So I asked some dam questions and took some dam pictures. I couldn't find the dam tour guide.
Unfortunately, they were doing construction - but this is the train station. Isn't it just beautiful?
That night we decided to go to the Casino - to satisfy one of our vices. My all time favorite slot game is 'The Munsters'. I could play it all day long and some day will have a Musters slot machine of my very own... Well, they aren't really popular so they are hard to find - THE HOLLAND CASINO HAD ONE!! So I played 10 euros worth (about $13) and then decided I had to let Kyle lose at something (he was just sitting there staring at me).We found the bingo machines and it was a total bust. Super Stupid. So, we went over to the video black jack machines. We both put in 5 euros - Kyle had to put in another 5 when he lost but I walked away with 16 Euros. I was up 1 euro - take that casino!!
Now we were hungry. So we walked across the little intersection (of course it's pouring down rain now) to the Hard Rock. At first Kyle thought it was the stupidist idea ever to eat at Hard Rock but I wanted my HRC pin so he was just going to have to deal with it. Once he got a look at the menu he changed his mind. There were glorious things on the menu - like unlimited soda, and rum and cokes, and real hambergers, baked beans, baby back ribs...he can't wait to go back to another Hard Rock on our next vacation (lucky for him 5 out of 9 stops on our cruise have a HRC).
After dinner I went do the gift shop and picked up my pin (I now have 3 - Rome, Paris, Amsterdam) and we decided to head back to the hotel. It was late and we were wet and tired. We took the scenic route back to the tram and walked around the bar district a little bit before we hopped on the tram.
The next morning we picked up our 24 hour I amsterdam passes and started out on our day. We were walking to Anne Frank's house when we saw some green and thought we would check it out. There's some really neat history with this area (unfortunately I can't remember it all). This used to be a nunnery but is now subsidized housing for single women. I think these row homes are so neat!
So off to Anne Frank's house. We weren't allowed to take any pictures in there so I kinda put my camera away and forgot about it for a while.Anne Frank's house was so neat (and creepy at the same time). I vaguely remember the book from elementary school. You know, you read this book when you're 12 and even though you know it's real you don't really get it. I'm sure even if I read it before I went I still wouldn't get it. (Now I really want to read it again) So you walk through the warehouse that was below the hideout and then up a couple of flights of stairs to where 8 people lived. They had to be silent during the day because the warehouse workers (all but about 3) didn't know they were up there. Then, at night, they had to be even quieter because no one was supposed to be in the building at all.
Anne's actually diary - written in Dutch - was there. I don't think I knew that she wanted to be a writter. Once she went into hiding she began to keep this diary and at one point she heard that after the war was over there was publishers that wanted to publish stories. Once she heard this (on the radio, I think) she started to edit her own work to get it ready to submit to the publisher.
To this day they still don't know who alerted the authorities that the family was in the warehouse. When they were captured the entire place was ransacked and all the furniture was removed. SOMEHOW the diary was left behind. After the authorities left, one of the people that helped the Frank family came in and found the diary. They kept it so that it could be returned to Anne once she was released from the concentration camp. Anne died in the camp about 1 month before the liberation. She thought that the rest of her family and friends had died as well - but her father survived (he was the only one).
After years of trying to find Anne her father, Otto, decided to read her diary (he had promised he would never read it) and then spent the rest of his life trying to get it published and her memory honored.
We spent a LOT of time in the museum - it was so interesting and really made me realize just how much went on during WWII. The trip to Amsterdam would have been complete by just going to Anne Franks house.
After that we decided we would go on a canal cruise that was included in our card. It was really a neat thing. We got to go past a lot of the big attractions in Amsterdam and kind of decided if there was anything else we wanted to see. Plus, it was raining outside and the boat was covered so we were dry.
After our cruise we thought we would go to the Jewish History museum because it was open late on Thursdays. It is NOT open late on Thursdays and as we were walking up (it's literally around the corner from Anne Frank's House) we heard them lock the door. Ok, fine - no Jewish history today - we'll go to the big church, it's open late. Well, it IS open late - but it's also completely closed from October to January. Alright 0 for 2.
By now it's dark, cold, and raining. We decide that the Amsterdam gods are not interested in letting us do any more touring tonight so we found a place to have dinner and then went back to the hotel to watch a movie (I don't remember what it was but it was BAD!)
The next morning we got up and decided to hit some art museums.
**Side note** The longer I'm in Europe the more I lose faith in humanity. Some people have too much G.D. money. Including, but not limited to: The Catholic church, people who be-dazzle human skulls with diamonds and rubies, and people who make me pay them money to go see their house. These people have some messed up views if you ask me. When you are stealing marble columns and building fake canals to get them to your church, or are bored and think it's a good idea to super glue diamonds to grandpa's head - you need to get your priorities in order! Give some freaking money to charity! If not, at least do something productive with it - put it in a savings account and earn some interest or something.
First we went to the Rijks Museum. The building it was in was beautiful (so beautiful in fact my HRC pin is of it) but most of it was scaffled off for restoration. Abby, please excuse me for saying this. I just don't appreciate art like I'm sure I should. I am able to look at it and decide if I like it or not based on color or subject etc. but I just don't get into more than that. Probably because I'm not cultured enough. I do appreciate the talent these artists have - I've tried to paint before and I can't even paint a wall. So, it doesn't take me hours to visit an art museum.
The last exhibit we saw was For the Love of God. Tell me you don't look at this and go 'OHH, EWW!' Those are real human teeth from the original skull.
After I decided that some people have too much money/time we headed over to the Van Gogh museum. After a quick lunch in the cafeteria we took the tour. All the exhibits were beatutiful but I expected to see more famous works by Van Gogh - like Starry Night or the self portraits where we chopped off his ear or the blue one. We did see the Sunflowers and the Room at Arles though.
We did find the I (am)sterdam sign and waited quite a while to get a picture without people in front of it. This is the best I could do.
After the art museums we headed over to the Dutch resistance museum. Now THIS museum was something I could really sink my teeth into. Unfortunately we only had just over an hour to see it. There was so much to read and watch! The museum started before the Nazi's invaded and went all the way through the liberation. When you combine this museum with Anne Frank's House you almost completely negate the lack of human decency apparent in the other museums around town.(Maybe I'm being hypocritical. I do want a Kansas Castle...but I don't want a GIANT castle, or want to imprison people to wait on me hand and foot, or carve out canals to have my custom marble delivered to me personally (that I'm not paying for, of course, because it was 'given' to me) or bronze grandma's hand and hang it on the wall for that matter...)
Speaking of decency, after we finished up at the at the Dutch Resistance Museum we decided to take a walk through a couple of the many red light districts. The hookers didn't like their pictures being taken so I didn't. Kyle was less than impressed with the quality...I had to remind him that it was Friday afternoon while most people were still at work - not exactly the prime hooking hour.
**Entrepreneurial sidenote** There are no pimps in Amsterdam. There are madams that are normally older prostitutes. They own the property that the hunger prostitutes rent by the hour (normally in 8 hour blocks). Hours during the day are cheaper then hours at night (a good spot can cost 100 USD during the day and 200 USD at night). Prostitution was recently legalized in Amsterdam and most of the professionals actually didn't want it to be legalized - now they have to pay taxes, file paperwork, and the industry is heavily regulated. Prostitutes are actually licensed: they can't have criminal records, must be disease free, keep their 'workspace' hygienic, use protection, and stay away from minors.
It's dark by this point again so we went and had dinner (and more Belgium waffles) and then back to the hotel for bed.
Saturday we got up and headed out to the Heineken Experience. What a blast! We were lucky - they are in the process of remodeling, updating and adding to the experience so since it was still under construction a little bit we got the old (lower) price but got all the new experiences. It was similar to the brewery tours in the US except they don't actually brew beer here any more and it is a little more high tech. We took most of our pictures here (because we were allowed to and because it wasn't freezing...)
Here was a neat little thing. Different parts of the wall would light up as the brewing process moved along.
Here is the bar area - in the shape of a star!
The ceiling was made out of Heineken bottles. The lights behind it changed colors and it actually looked like a wave (you can kinda tell in the picture).
Heineken sponsors the 007 movies so they had James Bond's suit on display. I took a picture of a girl kissing Daniel Craig's picture and I couldn't be outdone!
We were also able to make some Heineken inspired videos and send them to ourselves. Heineken videos are always more fun to make after a couple Heineken (Heineken).We finished up our tour with a couple of purchases (you can see the picture of what we got at the end of the blog).
We took a walk along the most expensive part of Amsterdam (the homes were beautiful! - it was right between the shopping area and the red light district) and here was the ending view...
On our way back to the hotel we found this cute little car. It smaller then the Smart but still holds 2 people. I couldn't help but take a picture! We actually saw one driving down the road on our way to the train station and it was totally full! We actually saw one smaller then this with only 3 wheels too...
The next morning we got up and headed to the airport. We spent 5 days looking for a coffee shop and finally at the last minute, in the airport, we were able to find one!!
The plane right home was, luckily, uneventful. We were cold and tired and ready to come home.Here are the toys we bought at the Heineken experience:
The stein holds a litter of beer!
Kyle also made his own bottle of beer - take a look at the bottom of the bottle!Alright - now were off on another vacation in 2 days...we really gotta stop going places :)
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