Today was a very long day in Amsterdam. We left at about 10:30 by car and parked near a train station, then took a train into Amsterdam. That took about a half hour, and we arrived in Amsterdam shortly after eleven. We spent about five and a half hours in Amsterdam before taking the train and car back home. As you can imagine, my feet hurt really badly by the time we made it home.
As soon as we arrived in Amsterdam, I could immediately see differences from Gouda, where we were yesterday. You've probably already figured out the core of the differences: Amsterdam is a big honking city, for crying out loud! With cars, busses, motorcycles, streetcars, pedestrians and lots and lots of bikes everywhere! We got out of the train and crossed the street to tourist information. I kind of fell in love with one of those bags that says ''Amsterdam" in different fonts and color schemes. You can get one of them from pretty much any tourist destination city. Unfortunatley, they were expensive and I didn't need another bag, which I had to keep reminding myself throughout the day because I saw them in mutliple stores.
At the information center we bought tickets for... brace yourselves... a one-hour-long boat-tour of Amsterdam! I was so excited! Pretty much anything boat excites me because there aren't too many boating opportunities at home.
The tour boat gave us information on all the sights we were seeing in Dutch, German, English and French. It was helpful to know two of the four languages because if you weren't paying attention, you could hear it the second time. ;) I was also proud of myself for understanding bits and pieces of the French part. :)
I loved the boat tour! It gave us a really cool perspective of the city and also some all-around information. I took lots of cool pictures, but then my memory card was full. ARGH! Why does that always happen at the worst times? I had to delete some pictures and videos and used the camera sparingly during the rest of the day.
A lot of the canals were lined with houseboats, many of which also had a small boat attached. The houseboats pretty much don't go anywhere, so the little boat is for actually navigating the canals. Some of the nicer houseboats had flowers, which really made everything look prettier and friendlier. The farther away we got from the train station, the cuter the city got. All the buildings were old and cute, and big old trees shaded the streets. Not many cars were in the historic part of town, but there were bikes EVERYWHERE, and not just in the historic area. Bike parking lots are all over the place (we saw a 3-story bike parking garage while on the boat tour), bikes are leaned against the railings by the canals, and bikers are more plentiful than cars. Most of them just rode on the road, but in some places there were separate bike roads, which was cool. :)
After the boat tour, the wandering began. Everything in Amsterdam looks pretty much the same: a cobblestone road, a canal in the middle, and a decorative bridge. Every street was the same! We were intending to reach the flower market, but we didn't find that right away and just walked around looking at things for a while. We were also shortly in an old post office which had been converted to a shopping mall. It was an interesting juxtaposition of old and new.
We also walked by the Anne Frank house. We didn't go inside because the line to get in goes around the corner and down the next street, and all the reservation tickets were taken up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. :( I read Anne Frank's diary this school year, so the book was still fresh in my mind. I really wanted to go inside the house, but it just wasn't possible today. That was really the only disappointment of today.
Then we reached the flower market. Unfortunately, now isn't tulip season - tulips are another famous attraction of the Netherlands - but the market was lively just the same. The first tent we went into had an entire wall covered in different packages of seeds. There were also bulbs for different kinds of flowers, fake flowers, and yes, real flowers. :) Tent after tent was like this, with tons of seeds, flower bulbs, flowers, and souvenirs like those bags, wooden shoe magnets, other magnets, china plates, toy windmills, and more. It was really cool.
After some more wandering, a stop at a french fry place, and even more wandering, we ended up in some sort of town square. The middle of the square was shared by and old castle or town hall or something and a statue/memorial thing. There was a larger-than-life statue of some fancy-schmancy guy, and he was surrounded by life-size statues that looked like they were protecting him. Some were holding guns, and others were just in interesting poses. A lot of tourists were posing and taking pictures amongst the statues. To my mom's and my amusement, my grandpa was walking around examinining the statues and, unbeknowst to him, photobombing the other people's pictures. :)
A sidewalk near the statues was taken up by artists. Lots of paintings and drawings of Amsterdam were laid out, and there were also a few portrait stands. We were drawn to a stand that had really pretty drawings of Amsterdam. Unlike some of the other artists' work, which were either black and white or full of flashy, exaggerated color, some of his pictures were in colored pencil, which were really nice and calm. We stood there for probably about fifteen minutes, not sure of which one we wanted to buy. We loved them all! We got into a conversation with the artist, and he was really nice, although I can't pronounce his name for the life of me. :) He was only asking 15 dollars for his work, and he said that it wasn't all about selling his paintings, it was also about just appreciating the art on display on the sidewalks. I really liked that he saw it that way.
We ended up buying a really pretty colored-pencil piece and resumed our wandering. By this time, I was getting tired and grumpy. My feet hurt, there were too many people, and every little action by my family members could potentially set me off. I just wanted to go home. We walked through the Chinese street and then returned to the train station.
And now we're back at the apartment. I had an awesome day today and loved seeing Amsterdam. It's so different than the big cities in the US, you know?
German word of the day: There are two today since the first one is kind of lame. Numero uno (wait... that's Spanish): Kanal. Pronounced kah-NAHL. Pretty much the same as in English except the "a" sound is shorter in German. In case you didn't figure it out, it means "canal." Nummer zwei (that's German): Boot. Pronounced BOHt. It means "boat."
The fancy schmancy statue dude was Rembrandt. :)
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