Amsterdam (Day 2)

We are currently are in the same Internet cafe that we were at yesterday. I liked this place because the computers were fast, but they're being more tempermental today. Not cool. Anyway, I have about a half hour for this post, so we'll see how much I can do. Might just get more time because I'm also on the phone with Umma. The computers also don't have firefox, so I have like twenty windows open, which is extremely annoying.

So, this second day in Amsterdam was a lot easier to do than yesterday. We also found areas that were not crazy crowded with tourists and that were a lot prettier than the red light district :P

We had a late start this morning. Both Gianni and Andrew decided to take their showers in the morning, which was fine when we were not sharing a bathroom with other people. Instead, they had to wait. The rest of us couldn't get ready in the meantime because when one left, they'd lock the other three of us into the room.

We left around 11:30 though, which was fine. We might have wanted to wake up earlier to try a walking tour, but neither Gianni nor Andrew seemed interested in that. Anyway, we wanted to see some of the sights in Amsterdam today, which meant a lot of aimless walking. Our first desintation was the Anne Frank house. Along the way, both Gianni and Andrew decided they were hungry (with the exception of Andrew, we weren't able to partake in the breakfast this morning since we were locked in the room), so we stopped at some kebab place for lunch.

After that, we were back on our way and found the house eventually. I wanted to go in kind of, but there was a long line and no one else seemed particularly thrilled to go in, so we moved onward. We walked down the street for a while and found this little thrifty/toy shop that Mia and Gianni got caught up in for a while. Then, we realized that I wanted to see something near the Anne Frank house, so we back tracked. We found this crazy novelty store on the way back. It's filled with all of the stuff that you'd find in Urban Outfitters or other similar stores. Everything was overpriced, but it was fun to look around.

We got back to the area we were heading towards. The Europe book said there was a cool monument for homosexual people or something in that area, partially in memorial of those killed during the Holocaust (I think). It was actually a big triangle in the middle of the square that I would have missed if Gianni had not pointed it out. It was cool though.

Our next stop was the Van Gogh Museum, which was supposed to be a very long walk away. We walked along the canals for a while and got lost after a while. In the meantime, we got to see a little flower market and some other rather interesting stores.

Anyway, we found our way again and walked over to the Van Gogh Museum. This was after we found a nearby park and started playing on the crazy tire swing they had set up there. We're so mature, yes.

The Van Gogh Museum is the first museum we've been to this entire trip (something I've made sure to remind Andrew about every time he whined about museums), but since both Mia and Andrew seem to like art museums, I thought this one would be good. I thought it was interesting. They've got a ton of Van Gogh paintings there (naturally), all kind of set up to go through his progression as an artist. They didn't have Starry Night :( and some of the other big ones, but they had the sunflower, his room, and a couple of other famous ones. Also, Van Gogh did a lot of self-portraits. I'd just like to point that out to all the people who make fun of me for taking pictures of myself in front of monuments.

Anyway, on the way out we got to see something kind of amusing. A security guy told some woman she couldn't go through with all of her stuff (you're not allowed to bring a lot of stuff into the museum, so they have a free coat/bag check. The woman started screaming at him and cursing at him and made a huge scene. Mia said she wanted popcorn.

After the museum, we went back towards the center of the city. We stopped at this place called Wok to Walk on the way back. Noodle place. Definitely not the local cuisine, but good all the same. No one in our group seemed interested in trying to local cuisine. Not that I've seen a place that has anything here. I've usually only seen stuff from other places.

Anyway, we walked back from there, which took another 15/20 minutes. During this walk, I managed to get hit by a car. Nothing bad or anything. I was just walking and a van backed really slowly and hit my arm. My supportive siblings and Andrew just laughed. In fact, if you mention this story to them, they will most likely laugh more.

We needed to get back to the hostel relatively early because we had to do laundry. Mia and I are more or less fine, but Andrew is almost out of clothes. On the way back, we stopped by the souvenir shop that the people who helped us find the hostel owned. That was an incredibly awkward and strange experience, actually, because they were kind of creepy. But they did give us a lot of discounts. And ... lollipops which we are most definitely not going to be eating.

After that, we found the laundry place. It ended up being really expensive and seemed to be our only option, so we had Gianni and Andrew take some of the bigger laundry with them and hand washed a lot of the other stuff. I'm hoping that the stuff dries.

That's about it for today. I really enjoyed the parts of Amsterdam that we saw today. Tomorrow we have to check out very early, so I want to get us back relatively early so we can shower and get rid of most of our stuff. Most of our day tomorrow will consist of traveling. We take an evening train from Amsterdam back to Brussels. Assuming the trains are on time*fingers crossed*, we'll be hanging out in the Brussels train station for a couple of hours before taking an over night train to Berlin. Depending on whether or not we can find Internet access at the Brussels train station, the next time you might here from us may or may not be from Germany.