Amsterdam... more than just legalised pot.

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We had a very 'romantic' Valentine's day... catching 3 trains in 6 hours to arrive in Amsterdam. We caught a tram from the train station to our hostel which is very trippy. It has 3 mirror balls, some weird lights and a funny looking pig picture. We were pretty exhausted so we just popped across the road to a coffee shop. To cap a wonderful Valentine's day, we ended up grabbing some McDonalds for dinner. Classy.

The next morning we visited the Van Gogh museum which has the largest collection of his paintings in the world (you'd hope so since they named the place after him). After paying the pricey admission we wandered through the collection starting from his early works to his later masterpieces. It went through some details of his life and friends and the troubles he had until he eventually shot himself. The highlight was seeing the famous "Sunflowers" which was pretty amazing in real life. We spent the afternoon admiring the canals and beautiful streets and checking out the sights while trying to avoid the thousands of people flying around on bikes. We were a bit disappointed to miss a Heineken brewery tour which is undergoing renovations.

The next day we went early to Anne Frank House where she wrote her diary while in hiding from the Nazi's. It was amazing how 8 people lived in this tiny appartment above the office for so long. From here we took the train to Zaanse Schans which is just north of Amsterdam. Here they have a little village set up with working windmills which make for some cliched but very nice scenery. While we were there we visited a clog museum but afterwards we still didn't understand why they wear them still. When we got back to Amsterdam we tried the famous Vlaams Frites which are just chips/fries with a massive dollop of mayonnaise on them. That night we made our way to the red light district where we wandered past the windows filled with scantily clad prostitutes. It was a bit bizarre but less confronting than the streetwalkers in Hamburg.

Amsterdam is a very cool city and really beautiful, we wished we had a bit more time to explore some more of the places around The Netherlands but we are fast running out of time and Belgium is calling.

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Photos

Outside the clog museum
Unfortunately for Cinderella, this time the shoe definately did not fit!

Home of Heineken
Unfortunately the tours are not running at the moment... bummer