Day 11: Amsterdam, Netherlands

June 14, 2013

We went to bed last night before dark, but that isn't saying much because it doesn't get what we would call dark until almost 11pm. Sunset is recorded at 10:03 last night, but it is still quite light outside until about 10:45. They are so far north that they have an extreme amount of sunlight in the summer, only about 6 1/2 hours of darkness!

This was taken at 10:15 pm so you can see how light it is!

Anyway, we caught up on sleep and hung around the boat this morning. We headed out after lunch to wander the city streets in the direction of the city's history museum. There are bikes everywhere! They are chained to everything including one another. The entire city is several meters below sea level so there are canals covering the city meaning that there are boats parked on the sides of the canals. There is almost as much road space allocated to bikes as there is to cars. Clayton and I decided that the city reminds of us of an ugly version of Venice, Italy. Venice is an island sinking into the ocean, so it too is covered with canals. However, Venice is not full of bikes and other things that make this town dirty such as the red light district, the very open ladies' "toy" shops, erotic dance clubs or the smell of marijuana. It is very windy here, which I hadn't really expected. It is windy enough that it gives me earaches so we searched for a headband. It took several shops to find a headband that was not embroidered with marijuana leaves. Marijuana is considered a "soft drug" here so you are permitted to have up to 5 grams on you at a time. It is pretty weird to see someone stand in the open on the street and roll a joint and then walk down the street smoking it. The entire country is very liberal and very accepting of all types of activities that are not socially acceptable in the south: erotic shops and images on windows, prostitution, gay marriage, nudity etc.

A parking lot of bikes

They have their own "mini-roads" for bikes that are two ways
whereas their actual roadways for cars are only large enough for one lane. 

A painting in the museum where Amsterdam is personified as the naked woman.

Their crazy amount of bikes that are everywhere!

We did find some pretty parts of Amsterdam as we walked farther east

So after about 1 1/2 hours of roaming the city we found the history museum. We decided it would be a good place to start to learn a little more about the town we were in. We learned a lot about how Amsterdam was settled, a little about why it is a harbor for those seeking freedom, and its wars and conflicts. We didn't realize how integrated it was into WWII being directly north of Germany. We both felt like Germany and Poland were the most emphasized areas in our history class when discussing WWII. In fact, neither of us knew that the house where Anne Frank hid was in Amsterdam until we started looking at attractions for the city. After the history museum, we had a snack (french fries) and sat in front of the city hall in the square for some enjoyable people-watching.

The city hall and square where we ate our fries and people-watched

Next we went to the Anne Frank Museum and was able to see where her family and another family hid for two years during the war. We were not allowed to take pictures, but you almost didn't want to because it had such a solemn feel to the whole place. We were able to see the actual bookcase that hid the entrance, watch videos of people who knew Anne as well as a video of her father after the war (he was the only survivor), see Anne's actual diary and see the entire building and Annex where the 8 people hid. It was crazy to actually see a place of such historical significance that we had been taught about for years. It was a very solemn place to visit, but such a huge part of history that we wanted to honor.

The Anne Frank house where she and her family hid for 2 years. (Sorry I can't rotate) 

After our tour of the Anne Frank house it was almost 9pm so we headed in the direction of our B&B houseboat and stopped on the way for some supper. We are both starting to crave American food so we both had a cheeseburger and a pop. The actual burger was good, but it was served on a hard kind of bread. I don't understand why all European bread is hard. On our way back to the boat, we saw a glimpse of Amsterdam night life which didn't interest us in the least. We got back to the boat and sat on the deck watching the sunlight slowly disappear and the street lights start to twinkle on the water.

You can't get much more American than a cheeseburger and Coke!

The view from our houseboat porch