Day 4: Amsterdam

This was, officially, on the record, one of my favorite days of the entire tour.

Waking up, I felt relatively good, all things considered. Breakfast was good - a mix of hot stuff, meats, cheeses and bread. I fell in love with the automated coffee machine though. I could have stuck the spout right into my veins. We ate fairly quickly, then hopped on the coach and drive for about 45 minutes to Edam, home of cheese! The town was sooo pretty. Very green and maintained. Very stereotypically Dutch. I loved it. We walked a little, Damian made a crack about me being Pippi Longstocking (this would be relevant later on), and I tried to take in the beauty surrounding me on the sunny, crisp Saturday morning.

We ended up at a little place called "Bike a Dijk". Very funny. Our guide was a lovely lady named Claudia. She was so upbeat, it totally rubbed off on anyone who was still feeling a little iffy from the night before. We all chose a granny bike and started off on our bike ride around down. I was a little rusty. "It's just like riding a bike"??? pft!!! I guess it didn't help matters much that I was riding with one hand; the other snapping pictures and taking video of myself riding. I didn't crash or run into anyone. Almost, but not quite. I was in awe of the scenery. Cobblestones, cottage-style Dutch houses, lush trees, small gardens, canals, windmills...it was wonderful. It ended too soon for my liking.

We parked the grannies and walked back to the coach so Damian could drive us to the infamous Cheese and Clogs place. How wonderfully random to put those two demos in the same building. The cheese was slightly stinky and the guy talking to us about the cheese made me laugh unintentionally. Pom Pom was amazed that they actually had cheese stuff in the big pot - apparently it's usually empty when he's there. On to the clog demonstration. The guy was funny, but kind of looked like he was going to impale himself on one of his tools. He whipped up a small shoe fairly quickly and sent us off to the gift shop. I couldn't not buy some clogs. I bought a pair that actually fit, painted blue and white. They're pretty. A quick photo-op in the giant clog and off we went.

Back on the coach, I started feeling anxious. I realized that I was going to see the Anne Frank house very very soon. To actually be in that building...incredible. We were dropped on on the Damrak again, and after taking a photo of the biggest bike-park I've ever seen, Sara, Matt, Jeff and I started walking and met up with John, Sam and Ashley at the National Monument in Dam Square where we started off on our hunt for AFH. After a 20-ish minute walk, we found ourselves on Prinsengracht. The line was long but seemed to be moving at a decent pace. The 4 of us went in search of food, and after being underwhelmed by the choices in the immediate vicinity (and witnessing a collision between a car and an old man on a bike), we settled on some street meat while the others waited in line. I felt like a bit of a jerk for skipping back in line, but oh well. That anxious feeling came back. When we walked in, this rush of emotion came over me and in spite of myself, I got a little teary eyed. How many times had I poured over the pages of my copy of the diary, imagining what the Secret Annex looked like. The offices were large and had videos and reading material, and in the second-to-last storage room(or office, I can't quite remember), they had nothing but photos of the 8 people in hiding. The picture of Anne haunted me to the core. If I'd been by myself I'm pretty sure I would have started bawling right then and there. There was just something about the eyes in that photo. I got really quiet as we came to the infamous bookcase. I was about to enter the Secret Annex! The layout was different than I'd imagined. Some rooms were bigger, some smaller, but the whole time I was wandering around, eyes locked open, in awe. The highlight, of course, was seeing the diary. It hits even harder when you see the first one and how child-like the handwriting is, and then see the diary she started re-writing when she was a little older and how the writing changed. Struck me to the core.

From there we decided to lighten the mood a little and go to the Heineken Experience, which was admittedly kind of lame other than a fun exhibit where we stood on a platform and were jostled around while a video played making us feel like we were the beer bottle traveling through the factory. We had our free drinks -mmm, beer in the afternoon!- and then Sara and I hit the gift shop. When everyone was done, we took the tram back to the hotel to get ready for our first real optional (other than the sex show, of course). I put on a dress, fixed myself up and went downstairs to board the coach for our dinner at the Sea Palace. I rolled my eyes and laughed at Andrew, a crazy Aussie boy who thought it would be a good idea to wear his new clogs to the dinner. :P I laughed quite heartily when we were dropped off at the entrance to the restaurant and Andrew clunked along, trying to keep up as Pom Pom watched and laughed at this poor guy trying to walk in wooden shoes. There was so much food at the restaurant, there is no way anyone could have finished it all. Nothing too exciting happened over dinner - I was too hungry to do much other than eat. As we scarfed down dessert, Pom Pom and Damian made the rounds to the tables to chat, and I officially confirmed to myself the fact that we were REALLY lucky to have such a great team leading us around.

On to the Canal Cruise. We boarded the covered boat, took a seat and were given little shot bottles of Flügel, and yelled "Prost!" as we downed our first on-board drink of the night. I drank copious amounts of wine, mingled and took loads of pictures of the beautiful views from the canal. It was a great opportunity to get to know people a little better. I was quite appreciative when Damian decided to be attentive to the ladies at the table and brought the bottle of wine over to us to refill our glasses to our hearts' content. Needless to say, by the end of the cruise, everyone needed a little help getting out of the boat. What a fun time we'd had. We were on the lookout for somewhere to go...no one wanted to go back to the hotel in the state we were in...so we found a hole-in-the-wall bar and kind of took it over. There was much dancing on the bar, socializing, and I bought Jess a birthday shot. I'm not quite sure how late we were out, but at one point, after a lot of dancing and a lot of fun, we left and caught the tram back to the hotel. I was sad that we were leaving. I made a mental note that someday, in the near future, I would HAVE to return to Amsterdamage. I'd had such a wonderful time though. They say that you fall in love with the first foreign city you visit, and this was completely true for me. So all I could say as I fell asleep was "Dank je wel, Amsterdam. I'll miss you."

---

Videos from "Day 4: Amsterdam":

---

---