Day 11 - 5/28

Amsterdam

Local Time: 8pm

This morning I got up early to talk to Kevin on Skype. Its harder to find time to talk now that there is a six hour time difference.

After breakfast, we went on a tour of the Anne Frank house and museum. You usually have to wait in a long line to get in. However, some people from our tour went earlier because they went on an all day countryside bike ride. They waited in line so the manager of the museum agreed to let the us, the second group, skip the line.

The museum was awesome. It is located in the actual building where Anne Frank and her family were hiding. We got to tour the rooms where they lived and where Anne Frank wrote her diary. They also have a lot of artifacts and original documents from the war, including Anne Frank's original diaries. Auto Frank, Anne Frank's father and the only survivor of her family, is responsible for the preservation of the house and for publishing the diary.

After the Anne Frank museum, a couple other girls and I went to the Rijks museum. It has a lot of Rembrandt's work and a lot of historical Dutch works. I really enjoyed walking though and seeing it all. I bought the museum guide on the way out so I can read more about everything.

After the museum, we went to the Heineken brewery to pick up a few gifts. I opted not to go on the tour because it was expensive and a large part of the expense is your three 'free' beers. Since I don't usually finish one beer let alone three, I figured it wouldn't be worth it.

Next we went to a pancake restaurant for dinner. Pancakes here are more like crepes. They are very thin and loaded with toppings. Mine had strawberries, chocolate, whipped cream and powdered sugar. It was probably not very healthy but, like everything here, it was delicious!

After dinner we took the tram back to the hotel. The tram in Amsterdam is almost as confusing as the roads. We had a map of the tram lines but it lacked major landmarks so it was almost impossible to navigate. To avoid getting lost we did the easiest thing by taking a tram all the way to Central Station and then finding the tram that went back to the hotel. Even the locals have trouble understanding the tram system. As one women put it, “There really isn't a system.”

We made it back to the hotel and I'm spending the rest of the night organizing my luggage and packing. I opted out of going to the pub crawl because the amount of alcohol sounds lethal and we have to get up early to take a bus to Paris.