Amsterdam

We had a fantastic weekend in Amsterdam last week. The flight across was delayed by about half an hour due to fog in Manchester. Andrew wasn't so good with the take off, and thankfully the flight was only 55 minutes long so he managed to get through it okay.
We started off by visitng the Heiniken experience. 10 euros to get in and you get 3 free beers. It is a tour about the start of the company and the brewery. It was pretty good. you also get a free gift at the end as well. It was a bottle opener.
Then we wandered around town and went into a few different pubs and a couple of cafe's. We then headed back to the hotel and got something to eat. Dutch take away, not really that different to anything else. But they do have mayonnaise with their chips, which is my new favourite thing.
On Saturday we headed to the Rijksmuseum, which is the state museum. Very good museum. There was a big deisplay of Rembrandt paintings, including the Night Watch. you could get a sheet that explained the different points of the painting including the girl in the middle, and various people as well as the fact that the painting was cut down when it was moved to the town hall so that it would fit on the wall. Nobody knows where that piece is and people can only speculate as to what is contained in that piece.
We spent the afternoon wandering around again stopping into various places of interest, including the Sex Museum. A friend of mine went there when they visited Amsterdam so we decided to check it out. A very interesting look into the porn industry since the early 1900s.
That night we went out for dinner at an italian restaurant.
On Sunday we went to Anne Frank House. I found this really interesting having read her diary. You can't really imagine how small the area was that they lived in for all that time until you actually see it. The staircases were very steep and not very wide.
For lunch that day we had fish and chips and the biggest pancake I have ever seen, it was bigger than the plate it was brought to us and the plate wasn't exactly small. We then spent the rest of the day walking off lunch.
The whole time we were there everyone spoke English to us which made getting around so easy. All the restaurants as well, except the menus were in Dutch so that was a little difficult. Amsterdam isn't that big and you can walk pretty much the whole way around pretty easilt. We had 3 different maps to help us as well. It was what I expected a European city to look like, with the canals and the old buildings, it was all very romantic. On Friday it seemed very drab and everyone seemed grumpy, so I wasn't overly impressed. On Saturday though it cleared up and everyone seemed to relax and have a laugh. It made the city feel very personable.
We did go to the red light district because we wanted to see just what it was like. I found the girls very depressing and not very attractive. Most of them looked like they didn't want to be there, but all the men walking passed hem seemed to find them a great entertainment. each to their own I guess.
On the whole I can completely recommend Amsterdam for anyone planning a trip to Europe.
One last note a big congratulations to Russell and Junko on their baby girl Emily, i pray they are both getting stronger by the day.