Exploring Amsterdam

After having fun on Friday at the wedding, Mike and I had one day left to explore the city of Amsterdam.  So we decided to make the most of it.

Our day started at the Houseboat Museum, which was pretty neat.  You see them all the time on the canals, so getting to go inside one was pretty cool.  I was thinking about renting one for our time in Amsterdam and I'm glad I didn't because I didn't realize how much they rock when other boats pass by.

After we finished our little tour, we decided to head over to the Anne Frank House to see how long the line was.  We severely underestimated the wait time and when we got there, it looked like it was going to be a couple of hours, so we decided to skip it.

I am glad that I was at least able to see the house.  We also did see the Westerkerk, which Anne wrote about in her diary.  I have read her journal twice and seeing all these places was incredibly surreal to me.

We decided that our next stop should be the Amsterdam Museum.  We both really enjoyed that museum, especially the exhibit on the first map of the city.  The exhibit on the more recent eras was also very interesting.  I liked learning about the Olympics that were held in Amsterdam in the 1920s.

Since our feet started to hurt, we decided to leave and hit up the beer bar we passed by earlier, BeerTemple.  I had read about it (it is owned by the same people who own the bar I mentioned earlier) and I wanted to skip it because it said it was American themed.  Why go somewhere overseas that spealizes in stuff you can get at home, right?

Well so much for that train of thought because we ended up spending quite a bit of time there before we went to dinner.  While they bill themselves as an American beer bar, there was also a lot of stuff there from Europe, so we drank off of that menu.   And then we came back for one more drink before leaving the city center for the night.

Although we didn't hit up the major attractions in Amsterdam, we had fun seeing the less crowded areas.  Fighting crowds isn't my thing, so by avoiding that our trip was much more enjoyable.

Coming up next, Paris!  And the very pleasant surprise that was awaiting us at the Gare du Nord.