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Published: July 14th 2010
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When we arrived in Amsterdam we jumped on the tram to reach our hotel. We weren’t sure where to get off but were helped by an Aussie (from Emu Park)! After dropping our bags off we decided to hit the streets and start checking out the sites!
We arrived at the royal palace to see it under maintenance which was a bugger, it would have been nice to get a good view of it. We then decided to walk around the mall area and just browse and people watch. The city is full of tourists and bikes (of course)! Bikes definitely rule the roost followed by trams and cars and pedestrians are definitely at the bottom of the hierarchy! You have to keep your eyes open or otherwise you might get hit by a bike! They were all cruising bikes with no mountain or road bikes in sight.
We accidentally (yes really!) stumbled into the red light district. We had heard about the windows, shows and coffee shops but weren’t really prepared for what we saw. We won’t go into any details (we’re sure you can imagine!), let’s just say there were all shapes and sizes to accommodate everyone’s
tastes. We’re sure we weren’t the only shocked ones as the place was full of tourists. After wandering around for 20 - 30 minutes we decided to call it a night and just chill...
The next day we decided to start making the most of our visitors card which gave us access to lots of museums. First on the list was Rembrandt’s house. This was quite unique and gave a great insight on who he was and how he lived. After that we wandered around the local flea market. There was a strong whiff of the green stuff in the air and plenty of smoking apparatus for sale!
We then went past Anne Frank’s house but decided the queue to get in was too long. We went into the Oude de Kerk Cathedral where the travelling World Press Photo 2010 exhibition was being shown. This was a fantastic exhibition but many of the photos, especially those in war torn areas, were very graphic and hard to look at. There were also some fantastic nature and sports shots though which lightened the mood.
After lunch we went on a canal cruise. The canals are awesome and seeing the
houseboats on the side really made us want to live in one (until we learnt about the maintenance)! After the cruise we went to the Van Gogh museum which was amazing and holds the biggest collection of his works in the world. We definitely love his unique style and learned a lot about his life. It was a very tragic in the end and it was a shame he wasn’t as appreciated then as he is now. We hope he’s smiling now!
We started the next day at the Rijks museum. Even though we aren’t major art lovers, we are still enjoying seeing all the different styles of art throughout Europe. There museum holds some amazing pieces from the 17th Century including a lot of paintings from the Dutch golden age showing battles which they were in, some very unique and detailed dolls houses and lots of silverware. There was an interesting silver tray which showed all of the countries/continents except Australia as it hadn’t been discovered yet!! The highlight of the museum is Rembrandts masterpiece - “the Nightwatch”. This is an amazing piece and massive even after a piece was sliced off so it could fit into a
cathedral! Another artist has made a smaller painting of what the original used to look like.
After the Rijks we had a quick lunch pit stop and Lysh ate like the locals and had a roll with raw herring, onion and pickles. This has not become one of her favourite foods! Next we went in search of the houseboat museum which was different and it was nice to visit a museum in 30 minutes. It was a lovely museum and showed really well what canal boat living is like. We also enjoyed a coffee inside. At the other end of the scale of Amsterdam is living are the fancy canal houses. We went into the Willet-Holthuysen Museum which shows a magnificent canal house. Unfortunately for Richie our next stop on the museum circuit was the handbag museum! Lysh whizzed around quickly and loved seeing all the different styles and types of bags - from the practical to the glitzy. There was a temporary swarozki crystal exhibition which had some very blingy bags!
On the way home on the tram there was a bit of an incident.... The driver was driving like a maniac and so fast on
the corners that people were actually screaming! We think he wanted to be a formula 1 driver! We felt like we were going to de-rail and at one point we heard a bang and jolted a little. We believe we hit a car but weren’t sure until we got off the tram a couple of stops later where the driver of the car was chasing the tram. Our stop was just over a bridge and the car had to screech to a holt because part of the road was ripped up. The tram tracks were intact so the tram continued on. The car (a brand new V8 Jag) reversed back up the tracks and took a different road chasing the tram. We were quite relieved to be off the tram! The driver looked like he was a gangster so we hope it had a happy ending!
This was our last night in Amsterdam so it ended on a crazy note. Amsterdam is definitely crazy but also beautiful. You could never get bored here! We left the following morning in the rain and boarded the train to Germany. Some of you are probably wondering if we enjoyed all Amsterdam has
to offer - we’ll let you decide on that one!
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