AMSTERDAM!

Okay. So Amsterdam was awesome. And a whirlwind of a trip. Wow.

Ashley and I woke up at 6 so we could catch the 7:00 subway to the 7:20 train to the 9:30 flight. Turns out there's no need to get the airport that far in advance because travel within the EU is actually easier than travel within say... the same state in the US. We got to the airport 90 minutes early and it took a total 20 minutes to check in, go through security, and walk across the airport to our gate (at least 10 minutes were walking). It's an hour and a half or so to Amsterdam. We were flying KLM Dutch Airlines... and in the hour and a half they still gave us drink service and two snacks (crackers and cookies!). Quite impressive. We landed in Amsterdam at 11:20 and caught the 20 minute train into the city. We had planned on taking a walking tour that started at 1:00. The train dropped us off at Central Station (which there's a picture of here because it was huge and gorgeous). Wow. Amsterdam is probably one of my favorite European cities so far. It's amazingly pretty. We walked around the outside area of the station for a bit because we had time to kill, then grabbed sandwiches and walked down 10 minutes to Dam Square (I'm translating) which is the main city square and where our tour was leaving from. The tour is part of Sandeman's Walking tours. They are actually offered in a variety of European cities and if you're in a city where they are offered, I highly recommend it. It was a three hour tour (actually, a little longer, but we had a half hour break in the middle to grab a bite to eat and sit down) and it took us through all the main points of the city. By the end we had a pretty good idea how to get around the city, and knew a lot of cool facts and history. Did I mention it was free? The tour started in the city center, as said, by the Royal Palace and the Dam Square Monument. We headed into the Red Light District (1 pm, remember, so not much going on there), then passed such things as the highest point in Amsterdam (1.3 m above sea level... the majority of the city is beneath sea level. they spend a lot of time fighting the sea), a hidden Catholic church with the biggest organ in Amsterdam hidden in a normal looking house (Amsterdam was a Protestant nation for a while), many, many gorgeous canals and crooked houses (it's a very water based city, so when you build your house on ground that sinks you end up with very crooked houses), the Old and New Church, a magnificent post office (you would have thought city hall...), China Town (complete with Buddhist temple), the Jewish District (redone in 60's style architecture after it was emptied by the Nazi's and then pillaged by the freezing townspeople during the war (to burn for warmth)... thus making it the ugliest part of the city according to our guide), this included the Rembrandt house. We saw a guild with a tower full of windows. To get in the guild (picture) you had to make a window, and if you failed your window got bricked over. In front of this guild is now an open market but used to be the site of the guillotine that the Dutch apparently fell in love with. We found the many coffee shops and learned that Marijuana is actually quite illegal in Amsterdam, but they were so focused on killing the hard drug problem that they ignore the soft drug one. Ironically it's illegal to smoke tobacco inside a building, but if a cop catches you smoking pot inside the same building, he won't care... we also saw the famous coffee shop from a scene in Ocean's 12.

Our tour ended around 5. We decided to head to our hostel (which took a while to find anyway) and drop our stuff off and check in. We were staying in a Christian Hostel in the middle of the Red Light District, which was quite interesting. It was about 10 minutes from the city center. I had my first chocolate covered waffle for dinner. Basically, a square of a Belgium waffle that's covered in chocolate... which they then warm up. Absolutely amaaaaaazing! Then we headed back to the central station to catch a canal cruise since we'd been told to make sure we took one. Turns out there are over 1200 canals that divide the city into 90 islands. We were exhausted by that point, but it was beautiful to see the city at night and especially all the lit up canals. After the tour we wandered around the city for another hour or so and then headed back to our hostel and figured we'd sleep early and get started early the next morning.

We got breakfast at the hostel at 8, when they started serving it. I opted for the hot breakfast option, which was french toast with 'syrup'. Or so they claimed anyway. I'm not really sure what it was, but it was possibly more solid than liquid and tasted very unlike any syrup I've ever had. We think it was closer to a very weird molasses. Either way, I ate my french toast with jam... then we headed over to the Anne Frank House, which was on the opposite end of town. It was COLD! So much for our weather report of 40 degrees! Granted it was also supposed to rain and at least we had sun, but we were freezing on our 20 minute walk. The line to the Anne Frank House can be a several hour's wait later in the day, but we got there right as it opened at 9 and so were the first in line. It only took about an hour to walk through but was definitely worth it. Sad though. I realized I had never read the Anne Frank Diary and that I really need to..

After that we decided to take a tram to the Rijksmuseum (pronounced "Reeks-museum") because Dutch like to throw a "j" in where other people might use a "c". (we actually spent a lot of time analyzing the language, but I'll come back to that). This was a good idea as the Rijksmuseum was very far south of the city. The museum is absolutely huge and gorgeous on the outside. 2/3 of it was closed for restoration but we were actually okay with that... the top 33% was still there and that's all we cared about since we didn't want to spend 6 hours there as apparently many people do. It's the biggest museum in the Netherlands and has a lot of Rembrandt paints, like his most famous, "the Night Watch". We had learned our our free tour how the Night Watch had actually sat in a basement for a very long time and been quite damaged before they decided to hang it on a doorway in the Amsterdam Town Hall. But it didn't fit... so they actually cut slices off all four sides to make it fit! We spent about 2 hours there and then took the tram back up to the main city and walked around in the sunshine.

With another four hours to kill, we headed to tourist information to see where we could find the nearest windmill... We'd been directed to a specific one at the hostel which neither Ashley or I could remember the name of. The tourist guide rolled her eyes at this and informed us all windmills were the same. Granted, she is Dutch and apparently found windmills rather boring. She directed us to the only one in the city, which was a "15 minute walk at most" east of the city along the harbor coast. We figured this was doable. The other choice was a 30 minute train ride north. Well, we started walking and 15 minutes later we had seen a ship yard, NEMO (the science and research center, which is on a boat off of a boardwalk) and a couple of cool sculptures... but still no windmill. Another 15 minutes and we had reached it. Apparently the Dutch walk extremely/span> fast. It was pretty cool though. Not spinning as it's actually a residence... which was also kinda neat. We figured once again that it was worth it to take the tram back since neither of us were up for another "15 minute" walk. Once back in the city we took a walk to the south to explore an area the tour had just discussed but we'd seen from our canal tour as well. We saw the Music theater and walked around inside. We also found the "X-tra Cold Ice Bar", where the bar, stools and glasses are actually made of ice. You get thermal suits before you go in. Entrance was 8 Euro though, so we just took a picture of the outside. It was cold enough outside that we didn't need to go in to the colder... by then it was starting to get dark. We found a souvenir shop and then headed back north to explore one more time. We each got another waffle (Munich really needs to jump on the band wagon with those... they are amazing), took a last walk through the Red Light District and headed back to the train to the airport. Once again we were at our gate within 20 minutes of getting to the airport. The flight back was even shorter, just over an hour. 9:00-10:30 from gate to gate. Was home before midnight... and exhausted!

But... it was definitely worth it. The city is absolutely gorgeous but obviously has it's own sense of personality.

I also fell in love with the Dutch language. Basically, it looks like a really messed up German dialect. The words you can't recognize as obviously being very similar to German, you just have to say out loud and you hear either a German or English word. "Ingang" for example, is entrance in Dutch. This would be "Eingang" in German, but they use the English "in" prefix instead of the German "ein" prefix. My favorite word was "uitgang" (exit). This looks nothing like "ausgang" in German, but if you say it out loud... "ooit", you can definitely hear an accented "out".

One more example since I'm quite obsessed with the language. Here's a sign we saw.
"Wij werken nu ann de energie van morgen". This is very easily readable by a german speaker "Wir arbeiten nun an der energie von morgen". The only word that doesn't really translate is "werken", which is, obviously "work" conjugated like a german verb (german verbs end in "en"). Anyway. I'm sure no one else is quite as thrilled as I am and probably just skipped that last paragraph, but I love it.

Now, for picture explanations...
1. The thinnest house in the Netherlands. It's around 1.8 meters wide. It's inhabitants are taller than that. Yes, it is still inhabited.
2. The red light district. Red lights were at the start of all the streets. Warnings? Or to draw attention? I found it semi amusing.
3. A canal
4. The widest bridge in Amsterdam. Most of the canals are pretty thin.
5. Very crooked houses along one of the main canals.
6. The before-mentioned guild.
7. The windmill we hiked for 30 minutes to.
8. The magnificent train station.
9. Ashely and I in front of a canal.
10. Quite possibly the most amusing part of the trip. "Closed due to Circumstances..." Apparently the Dutch are pretty vague people.