Trip of a lifetime: Amsterdam!

This past weekend I went to Amsterdam with Erin (from UVM who I visited in New Castle while doing my tour in the UK)

We left on Wednesday and met at the airport in Amsterdam. We arrived fairly late so went straight to the hostel.

Here I go
Thanks to my flatmate who let me barrow her backpack

In the morning we found a Belgium waffle place on our street and grabbed the most delicious waffle I think I have ever had and a smoothie to go with it. While enjoying our breakfast we discussed what we wanted to see, and decided to go to the Anne Frank House first and then go from there.

YUMMY

The line was quite long, but it was nice out and we entertained ourselves by catching up, and discussing what else we wanted to do while in Amsterdam.

Canals everywhere

Line for the Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House was so interesting, and I was surprised at how nice the living courters were that they hid in. This small factory hid 8 jews during the Holocaust, and feed them as well. During the day they were not allowed to make a sound, while workers made jam below them. They could not use the bathroom, or play any games, they usually read. No sunlight was allowed in, and they were obviously not allowed to go outside at all. Crazy!

After the Anne Frank House we decided to go do the Heineken Experience. Amsterdam is the home of this famous beer, so they have set up a museum like attraction in the heart of Amsterdam for tourist to experience There were lots of virtual games, videos, hands on displays and more. It was the first place that the line for the mens room was longer then for the women's! haha

Anne Frank House

Erin and I had fun exploring, and enjoyed our complementary beers at the end. Afterwards we took a boat on the canal to the Heineken brand store. It was cool because we really wanted to do a canal tour, and this was included in the tour :)

Beautiful Holland

Who still wears clogs?

Heineken model

Yumm

Boat tour!

On the Canal

After the tour it was time to find food. We went to a Indian place and had a great meal, after we walked around the red light district of Amsterdam and enjoyed watching tourist. We had some fun with statues as well.

Yummy!

Erin's been shot

Having fun

Clogs

Flower shop

Friday we woke up early and went straight to the Van Gogh museum. We were trying to beat the tourist, we were able to purchase tickets to enter at 11 a.m. so we played on the IAMSTERDAM sign with everyone else for a while, and just enjoyed the nice weather.

DAM

So many tourist!

The Van Gogh just opened back up after massive amount of renovations. I am so happy we went, his work is absolutely incredible. I think the works I enjoyed the most were the watercolor, and when you are able to see the layers of paint he uses.

Van Gogh

3 Trees

FAMOUS!
Love this picture
Painted for his nephew

Afterwards we went to the market and found lunch in a cool turkish restaurant called Bazar, there I had a falafel sandwich. Sadly I didn't take pictures of the market but it was pretty cool, but kind of like every other market I have seen now.

To end out day in Amsterdam we walked back to the main square and people watched for over 3 hours. We checked out souvenir shops, and just walked around. We called it an early night. Erin flew out at 10 am on saturday whereas my flight didn't leave until 5.

So I slept in and walked around for over 2 hours to parts of Amsterdam I hadn't seen yet. Finally arriving back at the IAMSTERDAM sign where I ate breakfast, and had some coffee. After I still had 3 hours to kill so I walked to DAM center where there is a holland beach soccer tournament taking place. I sat there and watched for a while and watched a street performer for a while as well.