Amsterdam!

Wow I love Amsterdam. It’s so beautiful with the canals and the town houses...and they people there are friendly which is nice for a change! I went with another girl and guy so it was nice to not have too many people to travel with (it gets very complicated with too many people's opinions). We arrived around 8:30 on Friday evening and despite our sketchy directions from the hostel, we found our way there. After checking in we went to find the red light district. We couldn't find it for a while but we almost stumbled upon it...we just glanced down an alley way and there was the red glow. We walked down this alley and it was actually funny because right in front of us was a group of older people, like in their seventies, all walking through just looking at the windows...very bizarre. Walking through ts he red light district was like a dream (not my dream, but probably someone else's). It was very weird like I couldn't believe those people actually were selling themselves. Besides the group of older people and Christine and I, there were groups of guys anywhere from our age to middle ages men looking at their options and bargaining with the girls on a price. The girls each stood in a window with near to nothing on while winking or waving men to come over to them. It was actually very sad to think about how this is how they live their lives. We were in the area a little later than I would have liked because it starts to get a little weird after a certain time. So we found an Irish pub and hung out there for a while. Some men from Ireland came and talked to us, and of course they asked how we liked Obama. It was cool to talk to them despite the fact that they probably don't remember it.
The next morning we went to the Anne Frank Huis (house). This was a great experience, but obviously very sad. The most surprising thing I thought about it was that the area they lived in was much bigger than I would have imagined. I would have thought that they lived in tiny rooms with barely any walking space, but they were decent sized rooms. They probably seemed bigger b/c there was no furniture, but we walked through all the rooms they stayed in. In Anne's room there are still magazine cut-outs and newpaper clippings that she pasted on the wall when she lived there. Her actual diary was there and many documents from the war and concentration camps. We walked up the stairs that were hidden by the bookcase, which was neat to see.
For lunch we ate at a pancake place and tried the Dutch pancakes. They're big (the size of a plate) but not cakey like American pancakes. They're more savory and thin and very delicious! After lunch we wandered around and saw the city...there were hundreds of bikes everywhere (watch out cause they don't yield for pedestrians...Thanks Debi, your advice saved my life haha), the canals and houseboats. It was really crowded because it was Amsterdam's International Fashion Week.
In the afternoon we went to the Heineken Experience (the museum and brewery). It was just redone in 2008, so it was very interactive. We learned what beer is made of and got to taste test the wort (the stage of water boiled with barely, which tasted like sweet corn juice). We also taste tested Heineken twice and created commercials and music videos with green screen.
Later in the evening we went to two coffee shops and another Irish Pub. The coffee shops were really interesting…but luckily there were smoking rooms so we didn’t walk out of there smelling like pot. It’s a whole different world sitting at a bar stool next to someone rolling a joint legally.
On Sunday we walked around for a while before we caught a train back to Luxembourg. We saw where the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh are, although we didn’t go in. We also saw a flower market with tons of tulips. So far Amsterdam is my favorite city. Its so diverse with the red light district and coffee shops and then the flower markets and bikes and pancake houses. It’s hard to believe all that is in one city!

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