Two In One

Amsterdam is actually two different places. In the daytime, it is just like any other Dutch city that you would see in the movies. The beautiful flowers, the tall skinny buildings, and the canal system throughout the entire city make for great day tours and museum visits. Our group of travelers participated in some of the tours and museums. We took a wonderful canal tour all around the city of Amsterdam that had a practical and historic prerecorded audio guide that would tell us about the buildings around us and how the city came to be. The tour started out with not a cloud in the sky, it was a gorgeous day for sight seeing. But, about half way through our tour, it started to hail. We hadn't seen any clouds moving in nor was it preceded by rain. It just started hailing. The storm had caught up to us from behind and it was apparently very cold up in the atmosphere. Luckily, our tour boat was covered on all sides by glass paneling, so we were not pelted by the hail. As we all started conversing and starting to make plans for how to get to our next tourist destination, the hail stops. As fast as it had come, it was gone again. The sun even came back out.

We then hopped on a tram to the Heineken brewery museum where we learned how to drink a beer properly from a glass and about all the ingredients and processes that go into making beer. We also visited the Van Gogh Experience (which we thought was the Van Gogh Museum but it turns out that was closed and this was just pictures of his artwork instead of his artwork. And we couldn't return the tickets. We felt cheated.) and the Anne Frank House (which might have inspired me to read the diary since I wasn't forced to read it in third grade like the rest of my classmates).

And then there is the Night of Amsterdam. Right around dusk, things start to get a little sketchy. The city streets all of the sudden start to become more crowded, bouncers start standing at the front of every bar and restaurant, and cloaked men on the street start to ask if you want to buy things that are probably illegal even in Amsterdam.

Let's just say that although the nights were fun, I enjoyed seeing the beautiful sights of Amsterdam in the day light more than worrying about safety in the dark night.