Rainy Amsterdam

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Sunday afternoon it was back on the bus and off to Amsterdam. We arrived at 6pm and had to find our hostel since we weren't staying in the busabout one. It took awhile but we managed to find it, it's a pretty well known hostel in Amsterdam called The Flying Pig. We checked in and headed out to do some sight seeing. The town certainly how I had imagined it, it was a lot bigger and more city like. There were mostly just souvenir shops around our hostel, and you can only go in so many of those. We headed back to the hostel for a bite to eat and then decided to find the Red Light District because that is apparently a must do in Amsterdam. It turns out we weren't far from it and when we got there we were pretty shocked with it. It's hard to believe that Prostitution and whatnot is legal here and they just stand in the windows waiting for someone to walk in. Some of the girls looked so young and so much like you everyday girl next door, I thought it seemed kind of sad that they are doing what they are. And the majority of people are just there to sightsee, there were tour groups walking down the street staring! It was crazy. It definately was something neat to see though.
Monday morning we woke up and it was raining out, our first day of rain in who knows how long! We were kind of sad but headed out anyways to Anne Frank's House. It was really good but also really sad to see what they had to go through. She was so brave though and some of the stuff she wrote when she was just young is incredible to read. I haven't read her book but I think I just might have to when I get home. I didn't know much about here and visiting the museum was definatley inspiring. After Anne Frank's House we headed to the Sex Museum. Everyone we talked to said it was a really funny/neat place to see so we decided to give it a go. There were some interesting things, some funny things, some crude things, everything you could pretty much imagine was there, and even some things you couldn't. That evening we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to a coffee shop with a couple of fellow Canadian girls we met and chatted with them all evening.
Tuesday morning we woke up to rain again and headed over to the other side of town to have a look around. There wasn't much there but we ran into a guy from our busabout tour and he mentioned that a whole group of people were heading to the Heineken Brewery that afternoon and we should join them. We met them there at 3 and I have to say, the Heineken Brewery was much better than the Guinness Brewery. It wasn't boring at all, there were a lot of interactive rooms where you could flick through all of the past commercials, be a Heineken DJ, even a mini ride watching a video on a moving horse cart (not that fun but still cool!). During the tour we got 3 free pints of beer as well and at the end we got a free gift which was a wallet bottle opener.....very cool. After the Brewery all went for dinner at a local Italian resataurant. There was 16 of us so we took over the whole place but it was a really good and really cheap place to eat. Then we all wandered again through the Red Light District for awhile before heading home to bed.
Wednesday morning it was up early and off to the bus for a 10 hour drive to Berlin! Another country down already....where is the time going!?

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