Day 1: I flew into Amsterdam at 8:00am after sitting between two hot Dutch soldiers the whole way. It wad pretty fantastic. Maguerite, Brad's aunt, met me in the Amsterdam airport as she deferred a flight to meet us. We then waited for Brad. When Brad showed up, we left to drop everything else off in our hotel. We took the metro to New Markt Square and wandered around for lunch. Mmmm panini, and La Chouffe. We saw the Waag, the Oude Kerk and went through the Red Light District. We then went for a canal cruise. Brad and I were both very tired because of the lack of sleep with flights, and so the canal cruise became the Snooze Cruise. Brad's head started nodding off so much that his head nearly hit the table he was sleeping on. Marquette and I had a good laugh at that. We then stopped for a delicious waffle (Marguerite ate an enormous amount of whip cream). We walked through some houses that only religious women lived in who were not nuns, walked by the I Amsterdam sign, and then went for a delicious steak dinner. By this point, my jet lag was causing me to have out of body experiences and we left to go to bed. I slept soundly for 10 hours!
Day 2: we woke up early to go to the Anne Frank house. We thought we hag left ourselves a lot of time, but we ended up havjgn to pretty much run to museum. Because I had bought tickets online, we were able to skip the line. The program started two minutes later. We luckily ducked into a bakery to grab a quick bread snack. The Anne Frank house was really neat. It is surreal to be inside the actual house where the Frank family hid from the Nazis. It was a very humbling experience.
We then left the Anne Frank house and went to an Italian cafe where we had lasagna and potato pizza. It was great.
I wanted to go to the Rembrandt Huis, so Brad went and drank beer while I explored this museum. It was very neat to be in Rembrandt's studio and see where he lived. Rembrandt was also an etcher as well as a painter, and this museum had many of his etchings.
We went to the Heineken Experience after this,located in the old brewery. It was awesome and ridiculous. We got to ride a ride that shook you and sprayed you into becoming a beer. We also got to take a bunch of funny pictures and videos with their promotional equipment and emailed to us. They are amazing.
We then walked around and explored the Red Light District that evening. It is a crazy place full of scantily clad women in lingerie shaking their booties at passersby. It was eye-opening!
We then went to sleep in our sweet hotel room. Brad farted in the shower, which was unfortunate for him as he discovered he created his own pod-enclosed-fart-shower.
Day 3:
We woke up and decided that we would go to the Rijkamuseum in the afternoon. This left the morning open to do as we pleased. We first went to St. Nicolas Church, which was splendid and beautiful. We then went to the Oude Kerk, or Old Church. Brad didn't go inside because he had been there before, but i paid the 15€ to go in. It was very old and beautiful inside. The most striking this was the sheer size of the church. It was enormous inaide, and there were some 12 000 graves in the floor! It was unbelievable. I saw the grave of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia. Sometimes churches give you a very spiritual experience, and this one did. They had organ music playing and there were flowers and petals mourning the many graves on the floor. It was aw-inspiring and almost made me want to cry for some reason.
After this church, we went to the Church of Our Lord in the Attic, or Museum Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder. During the 1660's Spanish rule, Catholic churches were not allowed to be in practice. However, people were still allowed to believe whatever they wanted. Basically you could be Catholic, but the churches weren't allowed to function. What resulted because of this were full-blown churches built in houses. In the attic of this house was a church, spanning the width of three houses. It was complete with a pipe organ. It was very awesome. There were about 20 or so of these houses in Amsterdam at this time.
We then went to the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum is a huge museum with tons of art. The highlight of the museum was The Night Watch, a famous and huge painting by Rembrandt. It was gorgeous to see. I also saw paintings by Monet, and Van Gogh. It is a beautiful, huge museum. Brad and I both had a case of museum after this, and had to switch up our day.
We went to an amazing craft brewery underneath a windmill called Brouwerij 't IJ. W both sampled all their beer, and they were delicious. I was scared at first, but then ordered some dried ox sausage and cheese. Turns out it's pretty much salami and just as delicious.
It was rainy and kind of gross that night, and we tried to find a good restaurant. We ended up going to this Thai Restaurant that lonely planet recommended. It was called Thais Bird Snacks or something to that effect. It ended up being the best Thai food we've ever had, including what we ate in Thailand last year! It was so,delicious.
Brad then took us to a pub that had ridiculously expensive drinks. For some reason we both ordered a 15€ drink. They were delicious and the pub was fantastic, but we left right away to avoid going broke. We bought beer for the hotel after this, and went home.
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