Amsterdam Jan 20-24

Saturday:
Okay, so I arrived in Amsterdam. It was only about a 2 hour flight from Dublin. I landed at about 8pm, and I had to take the train into the city. Of course I got on the wrong train, 'cos that's how I roll. Anyway, this Dutch guy told me how to get on the right train and I told him I was from San Francisco and he said he'd visited and it was all very nice. On my way into the city I talked to about 4 different people and no one hesitated about speaking English to me. Everyone in Amsterdam knows English. It's absolutely true. So anyway, I get to the hostel and I find out that I'm in a room with TWENTY beds. Yeah. It was crazy. And there were even more Spaniards here. Dammit.

Sunday:
The hostel had advertised some free walking tours and so I decided to take advantage of that. There were hardly any cars in the city, and tons of bikes of course. Anyway, it was a really good tour, led by an Irish guy. There are tons of Australians everywhere. They love to travel. I'm starting to wonder if they are invading. Anyway, it was a really interesting tour.

The canals are beautiful and I like to take pictures of them, as you will find out. Look, houseboats!

This is the Rijksmuseum. It is a really wonderful collection of art, apparently huge. The building is under renovation for the next few years, so they have a vastly reduced collection on display but it's still a great place to visit. I saw a few Vermeer's and some Rembrandt's. If the Irish love their writers then the Dutch love their painters.

Here is one of the infamous coffee shops. Yeah, let me just tell you right now, that guy is NOT smoking tobacco. So, I didn't realize that a lot of people come to Amsterdam just to party. See, I wanted to see the city and stuff. Yeah, apparently I'm a big nerd.
Here is Dam Square. This is where the original dam on the river Amstel was located back in the middle ages. That large building across the way is the City Hall. For a while it was a palace belonging to Napoleon's brother, and now Queen Beatrix uses it when she comes to Amsterdam, though she mostly lives in Den Haag.
Here is the National Monument, commemorating the people (specifically Jews) who died in WW2.

This is a life-size statue of one of Rembrandt's most famous paintings, The Night Watch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28painting%29 It is a temporary exhibition made by two Russian sculptors, if I've remembered that correctly. The statue at the very back is a permanent statue of Rembrandt.

This is the Art Nouveau Pathe` cinema. Most films are shown subtitled rather than dubbed, except for children's movies.

So, I also took this walking tour of the red light district. It's very touristy and it was alright to be there with a group, but the more I reflect on it, the more it grosses me out. Yes, I saw the prostitutes in their red-curtained windows. No, actually, they just stand there. Oh, by-the-by, there is a kindergarten and a church in the red light district. Yep.

Monday:

I took a canal cruise. Here's a bridge from underneath. It was an alright cruise thing, I enjoyed it pretty well, but winter is definitely not the height of the tourist season. It's funny because there's a lot of 'widest this' and 'narrowest that' on the sight-seeing tours. The widest bridge and the narrowest house - 1.6 meters- are right next to each other. [I actually went to the Rijksmuseum today, but the pictures got out of order] So for breakfast today, I went to a Dutch SuperMarkt and bought what I thought was chocolate milk (it was in a milk carton) but was actually chocolate pudding or yogurt. It was tasty, but hilarious.

This is the view from the window of my hostel:

So, a lot of the houses in Amsterdam were built in the 17/18th century. They were built on wood pilings, which have a tendency to shift. Look at this building and you will notice how it is ... slanted. Apparently, they have big problems with fixing up these buildings.
For dinner I went to one of the 5 Argentinean steak houses and had the most ridiculously delicious rump steak. Yum!!!!!!
Tuesday:

Today I went to the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church, there's also an Old Church, and East/West/North/South churches - real creative those Dutch). There was an exhibition called Istanbul: The City and the Sultan which was extremely interesting.

And then I went to the Anne Frank House. So, when I passed by on the walking tour, I saw lots of tourists taking pictures of themselves in front of the museum with huge smiles on their faces. Like, I know that you're on vacation and you're having fun, but you're at the goddamn Anne Frank House. Anne Frank! People are crazy.

The museum is located in the house where the family hid. There were 8 people hiding and Otto Frank, Anne's father, was the only one to survive the camps. The family hid out here for two years before someone gave them up. It's a really excellent museum. I didn't realize that, culturally, Anne was Dutch. Her diaries are all written in Dutch (they had one on display). Also, she did a lot of editing and work toward preparing them for eventual publicaiton. She always intended to publish her diaries. Otto left the rooms bare, all the furniture was taken by the Nazis when the residents were imprisoned.
In the cafe of the museum, I met acrazy French woman. She asked me where I was headed and then commandeered me for 4 hours. She was 68 and terribly racist. At one point she asked me if there were a lot of Muslims in America, and I said yes. I was under the mistaken impression that we might have an interesting conversation. She said, yes we have them in France too, it's horrible. OMFG. Wow. At another point, she asked me if I'd read a certain book and I didn't understand what she said and figured that I probably hadn't so I said no. Then she sits back in her chair and says, smugly, 'Americans are so uncultured!'. Yeah, I thought, and the French are horribly racist and just generally jerks. Good thing all this stereotype-reinforcing was mutual. So, we ended up at another Argentinean steak house. She was speaking Franglish to the waiters (and to me, actually, but I could understand her pretty well) and when one of them didn't understand her, she started calling them 'primitive people' behind their backs. And then, after being one of those horrific customers everyone hates, she didn't even leave them a tip! I left everything I had on the table when she wasn't looking, but she was just awful. She also bothered some random Dutch man, because when we were wandering around Amsterdam, we ended up in a residential area and she stared into some guy's window and he thought he must know her so he came out to greet her. Then she argued with him about something he would know better then she would. Wow. But, since I had been by myself for about a week at this point, I didn't mind hanging out with her at the time. I just can't believe some people, you know?