dam

Last night I got back from Amsterdam, which was excellent. I met Michelle there for four days -- she first went to Prague to see a friend studying abroad, and then we chose Amsterdam as something of a midpoint for us to meet up. We met in the airport Wednesday midday and took the train to our hotel. We had a great few days to explore the city, and only got lost a little (this was probably my fault... it usually is).

Some highlights included: a canal cruise to see the city (I really enjoyed the adorable canal houses), walking on many bridges (Michelle, the future civil engineer, has a thing for bridges), the Rijksmuseum (which had lots of artifacts and art, with many by Renoir, Vermeer and Rembrandt, including his famous The Night Watch), the Van Gogh Museum (including dozens of famous ones, like self-portraits, sunflowers and Starry Night), the Heineken Factory (no explanation necessary here!), the Anne Frank House, and plenty of walking and exploring. The above "iamsterdam" sign is outside the Museumplein, which is where the museums live. We thought it was cool and played in it for a while, in one of the sunnier parts of our long weekend (as you will see below, it was pretty cloudy most of the time and rained a bit on Friday).

There were some things we wanted to do but were not in season, like a nearby windmill village which is supposed to have like seven or eights windmills and other cute village-y things, but only one is open during the winter so it didn't really seem worth it to go out there. It's OK, I'll see the windmills next time -- it just gives me a good excuse to go back. We also saw tulips, but not to the extent I imagine we would have seen them during the spring.

Michelle turning the gears at the Heineken factory. This was before the beer taste-testing.

Outside of the Anne Frank House (the building on the left with the windows). They are pretty strict about no photos inside, but this is the street she looked out on every day for two years.

Canals and bridges all lit up at night. Pretty!

Michelle and I outside the Royal Palace in Dam Square.

Royal Palace (not open when the family is in residence, and it was closed to tourists when we were there)

More canal and houses, as seen from our canal cruise.

This is the Old Church as seen from our canal cruise. As you can see, it was a rather overcast day, which I think makes it look rather gothic.

I know it's a bit blurry, but here we are sitting in a giant wooden clog. It was about as awesome as you'd expect.