Amsterdam

We traveled by train to Amsterdam Saturday morning. When we arrived, it was very gloomy outside and ended up pouring rain the entire day. Luckily, there was a Hema (think small Target) in the train station, so we bought an umbrella and went on for the day.

On the canal cruise

Our first destination was the canal cruise. Amsterdam actually has more canals then Venice, so we thought this would be a great way to get acclimated with the city. We sat with 2 other Americans from Connecticut on the boat (who ended up being very strange)...

The cruise lasted about an hour, and allowed us to see a lot of the city we probably would not have seen. It started raining during the cruise, so most of our pictures did not turn out very nice :(

Bridge over a canal

Houseboats on a canal

It was also the Gay Pride Parade, which drew in about 400,000 people for the event. The parade was done on boats which floated through the canals and the crowd stood on the streets to watch. It was so crowded that we really could not get really close to take good pictures. Every float had a different theme; from cops to devils to brides. They all blasted music (mainly Madonna, Lady Gaga, and 80s)..The parade definitely made for some good people watching!

After the parade, we walked through the Red Light District. I never realized why it is called "red light"but now I know it is because there really are red neon lights above the windows. I was pretty disturbed by this area, so we did a quick walk through and went on with our day..

Our favorite stop in Amsterdam was at the Anne Frank House. It was very moving to actually be the place that Anne Frank and 7 others hid for 2 years, avoiding the Nazi army. It was very small, and I could not imagine living there with 8 people! We learned that during the day, no one was really allowed to do anything--run water, flush a toilet, move about the house--they were so afraid of being discovered by warehouse workers.I just can't imagine being a young girl and stuck inside an apartment for 2 years.

In the museum, the actual diary of Anne is on display, along with some of her other works. We weren't allowed to take any pictures in the museme so for more information, check out http://www.annefrank.nl/.

The Anne Frank House (the bottom level is a museum). The Franks and others lived in a 3 room annex in the back of this building.

The rest of our time in Amsterdam was spent people watching, avoiding the rain, and shopping. We had Chinese for dinner, then rode the train back to Den Helder.