Plan aborted. Unfortunately, Mom seems to have come down with something on the plane or right before leaving the US and it just got worse with the sleepless traveling days we had. She wasn't feeling well at all this morning, so making it to the Anne Frank house by 8:30 to avoid long lines wasn't happening, and Aunt Lanie and I definitely weren't doing that one without her. After the 7am wake up, we then took our time getting ready. Around 9, Aunt Lanie and I ventured out to find a grocery and pick up some breakfast. The city - at least our neighborhood of Westerpark - was dead! I had heard that Amsterdam was a late morning city, that bakeries and breakfast cafés didn't open until at least 10, but I guess I didn't believe it until I saw it. Luckily, we found a small grocery store very close to the apartment that I think had just opened. We were the only people in the store and starting looking around for breakfast items. All of the fruits and vegetables looked delicious - very fresh, but different than the US. I think the food is so much less processed than back home - for example, the strawberries were much smaller and more red, I think just from no growth hormones being pumped in and stimulants put on the seeds. Anyways, we picked up some pineapple then ventured around the whole store having no clue what to buy. We finally found some peanut butter and decided it would be a good source of protein. Choosing between 4 different jars and not knowing what anything on the label said was difficult, but we chose the non-crunchy cheaper version, it didn't look so organic which would probably taste better. We went back to the bread area, where the store baker was baking the fresh breads for the day. He quickly saw that we were slightly confused and asked - in English - if he could help us out. We started to pick up a half loaf of the bagged bread on the shelf when he stopped us and asked if we wanted to freshly baked bread. Of course we did! He went back, cut us half a load of wheat bread, and bagged it up fresh for us. Grabbing a diet coke on the way out, we went to check out and head back to the apartment. We hadn't quite gotten the hang of opening and unlocking our apartment door yet and we had to wake Mom up in order to let us into the apartment. After just her 30 minute nap, she was feeling much better. Last night, we had taken ice cubes out of the tray and put them in a bowl in the freezer. Since the ice cubes had then frozen to the bowl, Mom proceeded to drink her diet coke out of the bowl. We all tried to bread / peanut butter combo and decided it was the best peanut butter we had ever tasted, almost tasted like a little bit of cinnamon in there. We all ate multiple pieces of bread covered in this stuff before we finally looked it up to find out if this was just a local brand or not. Well, it was cookie butter, not peanut butter! Oops, it was delicious, but so much for that protein!
We then continued to get ready to leave, leaving the apartment around 10:30 to head to the Van Gogh art museum which I had already purchased tickets for. We taxied over there to avoid the 45 minute walk and make up some of the time we had lost in the morning. When arriving, we went through some confusion about which line to get into with our tickets, ending up getting out of the line we should have been in and then having to go back to the back, only to get to the front to find out we needed to walk a few blocks down to redeem our tickets from the canal boat tour place. (I had purchased the canal tour tickets and Van Gogh museum tickets together from Canal company to avoid multiple international transaction fees.) We walked in the direction they had showed us, getting to see the "I Amsterdam" sign along the way. Finally finding the place, we were able to redeem both the canal tour and museum tickets. We then had to wait in the same line - for a third time now - to redeem our canal Van Gogh passes for actual tickets. Finally inside!
The museum wasn't too large, we walked around for about an hour. It consisted of 3 floors, each with pieces from different time periods, and even a few pieces from other artists. The collection was mainly Van Gogh's brothers collection, who lived in Amsterdam. Van Gogh had painted and studied for a short time period while living with his brother, and many of the paintings were from then. There was also a temporary exhibition on the life of Van Gogh through a photographers eyes, which i thought was very interesting. We stayed the museum for about an hour, stopping in the gift shop at the end where Aunt Lanie purchased some post cards and a beautiful silk sharf showing the Van Gogh painting "almond blossom". We then decided it was time for lunch, and started wandering towards Blue, the restaurant with a 360 view of the city that I had chosen for lunch. We finally made it to the street and couldn't find the restaurant, but by this point we were all pretty hungry so decided to stop at a cafe with outdoor seating within sight. Thank goodness we did, because the food was delicious! Aunt Lanie and I both had a sandwich, hers chicken and mine salmon and avocado, and my Mom had amazing ravioli. We drank a little wine, and decided to quickly get on our way to make the most of this one and only day in Amsterdam. We exited the cafe on the other side after paying inside, which took us into a small mall. We looked around at what stores they had, and spotted a sign for Blue, the original restaurant we had been looking for. I guess it was in the mall - and it was straight up. We headed up just to check out the view and maybe have a drink. The view was awesome, only the first floor of the restaurant was open, but we took advantage and sat at a window facing table and had cider, beer, and a coffee for Mom. After taking in the view, we left the restaurant to start the 10 minute walk to Dam Square, the main square in center city Amsterdam. The street we went down was adorned with shops all over, and in the 5 minute walk, we passed 5 H&M stores! When we saw Dam Square, it was filled with people, and a soccer stadium! We had to go take a look at this! It was a miniature field, for sand soccer, which I had never seen before. There was quite the crowd, an announcer, and even fans with jerseys matching the guys that were playing. We stayed and watched for about 10 minutes before deciding to move on. At one point, the ball was kicked over the surrounding net and my mom happened to get it. Of course, I was the one to make a fool of myself after she gave it to me and I couldn't throw it high enough to get back over the net - i blame the heavy cross body I had on.
We walked around the square for a couple minutes, then went in the direction of the red light district, the most infamous neighborhood in Europe! We were heading this way with the Sex Museum on our agenda. Within a couple minutes, we had definitely gotten into the red light district. The stench in the air was a very distinct smell - one that is very recognizable, weed. Not only were multiple people causally smoking it like a cigarette when they walked by but we also passed at least a dozen "coffee shops", which are the places in Amsterdam that sell the stuff. We walked into one just to see what they were like. Quite a few people were in line and looking around they sold all sorts of products, energy dris, ice cream, baked goods, and much more - all containing weed or mushrooms. Next door to the coffee shop was the condom shop I had read about - the largest assortment of condominium the world. Small or large, all different colors, all different flavones, even hand painted condoms meant for display - not sure where you would want to display that! After a few good laughs, we kept going to the sex museum.
We did have to stop in a McDonalds to use the restroom, which cost money everywhere around here. While we were off course anyways, Aunt Lanie and I grabbed some frozen yogurt American-style, but it wasn't quite as good as back home. We should have waited for the gelato in Paris. We finally found the sex museum and paid the 4 euros to go in. Wow - we didn't know what we were in for. It was a history of sex, lots of pictures and even moving manikins. A little awkward with my Mom and Aunt unit we got over that pretty quickly and got a few funny pictures!
We left the sex museum with tears streaming down our face from laughing so hard. We crossed the street to the canal cruises dock where we would be taking our 1 hour tour by boat of the city. Amsterdam is made up of an impressive canal system, over 160 kms of canals in the city alone. The tour came with a set of headphones and narration to let us know what we were looking for. We learned that in the central part of Amsterdam, 3 rounded half circle canals wrap around the city, each one further out than the next. This used to be a sign of wealth, how many canals you were out from the city center, but now not so much. We also learned a lot about the facade of the houses - many were built up higher than the actual house and the maximum width is 6 meters, about 18 feet. Very wealthy families have bought 2 house spots in order to double the width of their homes. We also got the see the most famous, most photographed spot in all of Amsterdam, the 7 bridges view. (Side note - we knew the painting in our apartment living room was from IKEA because my Mom has the same one in our basement, it's a red bike in front of a few bridges and flowers, the entire background being black and white. We realized it was a picture from Amsterdam only 10 minutes after being in the apartment. The 7 bridges view is the picture!) We took lots of pictures, and even got to ride out into the river which all of the canals open up to and see the northern, more modern side of Amsterdam.
After the canal tour was over, we made our way to dinner. I had picked a restaurant based on online recommendations in Jordaan, a young adult neighborhood close to Westerpark. It took a while, but we finally found the restaurant, and it was closed! Bummer! But the one next door had lots of people and an outdoor table just opened up, so that's our place. The food looked good and we needed a beer. We sat and ordered beers and an appetizer that we had no idea what it was, taking a chance on that one. Good thing we did, because it was the best part of dinner. It was a spicey shrimp dish that was out of this world good. We people watched for most of dinner. Mom and I shared the spaghetti dish and Aunt Lanie got a fish and chips. Her chips, or fries, were very good. After a couple beers and all that food, we were not going to be able to do any dessert, and were all very tired and ready to get home. It was after 10:00 and not even dark out which was taking our bodies some adjusting to.
After talking for an hour and getting our stuff packed, we were ready to hit the bed. Tomorrow, we will be heading to the train station bright and early and on our way to Paris. We all loved Amsterdam, this will be a hard city to beat!
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