Watch out for the bike!!

Hey guys!!

Another day in Amsterdam! We woke up yesterday and headed to Vondelpark and wandered for a while! It was so much better than Hyde Park in London (which was so boring, just grass and trees, no landscaping). Since we were close, we headed over to the Van Gogh museum for a little bit of culture in the city of sin ;). It was a cool collection, but a little smaller than we both expected. After that we headed to another open air market to forage for food. I found an amazing sticky pancake drenched in caramel! We are learning quickly in the city to watch out for the traffic of which there are 4 kinds: the above ground trams, the cars, the people, and the insane amount of bicycles!! They have their own lane to ride in and their own traffic lights!


After all that walking (which included a few wrong turns around the canals - you can't help but walk in circles!!) we went back to the hostel for some quiet time before the night began. We had a good rest - naps are a frequent occurrence on this trip - and then went back out for food and fun. There is this fast food company here called FEBO. You put you money onto a little slot on the wall and open a little hatch with a window and grab your food. Its like a giant hot food vending machine!!

Strengthened by rest and food, we explored a couple bars and coffeeshops, and Alison found her new favorite beer (Belgian Peach flavored lambic beer!). Its so much different in the city at night: its so peaceful and pituresque and quiet (away from the Red Light district). But the wierd thing is the long long days since it gets bright starting at about 4:30 am and the sun doesn't set until 11 or 11:30! It makes it feel like the days are so long no matter how late you slept in or how many naps break up the day.



Today, we slept in super late and went to the Anne Frank house. The line was so long we gave up pretty quickly and went for food (writing this all out makes me realize we eat a lot!!). We went to the train station to book our tickets to Paris, but as we got our number to stand in the hour long line the computers went down for some unknown reason. Since nothing was going right, we decided to go to a museum we know would be entertaining, and went to the Cannibis College. It was a free informational "museum" with a huge marijuana garden in the basement. The people here are very serious about their weed, and its kind of funny to hear them talk about it.

After that we went back to the Anne Frank house and just sucked it up and waitied in the line. We toured the whole thing and it was a pretty moving place. After all that seriousness we went for falafel! I finally got Alison to agree to try something new [;)] and she loved it.

Tommorow we're going to try to get up early and rent bikes (probably a bad idea with my coordination skills) and go to the Heineken brewery and do a canal tour and the comedy show that we've missed 3 nites in a row!

Hope you are all liking our updates - still can't find a place that will let us upload photos, but we sure have some good ones (just think Sex Museum).

I'm starting to miss home a little (and my own bed), one week down, 4 to go!

Kristyn