Amsterdam

Hmm, what to say about Amsterdam....

Well, I'll say that our experience was probably a little different than that of most people our age visiting Amsterdam.  We had the fortune of being able to stay with Thomas' great uncle and his wife during our visit.  They have an apartment about a twenty minute ride on the metro from the city center.  It was a nice place and we got our own bed and warm showers, and they fed us very well.  They were very nice people, very welcoming, and probably the most spritely 75 year olds I've ever met.  On the first night there, they took us to a pub and stayed our drinking with us until midnight haha.

During our first full day, we visited the Anne Frank house.  Very crowded, very interesting.  I thought it was pretty neat that her dream was to become a writer and that her journal ended up being one of the most sold books around the world.  We also toured the Heineken "experience".  We actually liked this one better than the Guinness brewery.  Way more interactive things to do and Heineken on draugh is really actually pretty good (I normally like it okay out of a can).

I became a beer label

Thomas became a master bar tender.  Which is weird because they fill their beers until they overflow and then scrape off the foam.

And we finished the tour with a few of the green brew.

The Heineken experience also included a canal tour which was nice since we planned on taking one anyway.  The canals are everywhere and help keep the city from flooding and were used for trade back in the day.

The next day, Thomas' great uncle, Frits, took us to a windmill farm.  I half expected to to see windmills like you see in Texas.  But I was wrong.  These windmills were built in the 1600s and still function today.  Each windmill does something different.  The coolest one we saw uses the wind to saw wood into lumber.  I won't bore you with the details, but the wind turns the windmill which has an intricate gear system and one rotor which works the saws back and fourth.  Pretty neat and elegant and very pretty even on a crummy day.

Here is a tree being sawed into lumber.  

All in all I would describe the city as quaint.  It's smaller, the people are friendly, everyone bikes everywhere.  They yeild to no one, and I would definitely hit one if I drove there. Yes they have the red light district and coffeeshops, but I got the impression that those are largely tourist attractions.

Right now we're on the train to Berlin.  We should be there by dinner time and we'll see what the city has to offer.

-RO