Amsterdam, The Netherlands Holland

Amsterdam, the New York City of Europe.

It's flat here. Everywhere else we've been has been built on hillsides. We're floating through the lock into the port as I write this and it is thankfully starting to clear up. It was pouring down rain all morning. We dock here from 1-9pm so we get to explore the city later in the day.

Later in the day...well, what an adventure. We took a tour bus around the city. This is by far the coolest city we have been to! I would love to come back here. All the canals and gorgeous old buildings.

We visited the Anne Frank house. The place where they lived and hid for two years. Her pictures are still glued to the wall of her room, the church nearby still chimes the same bell on the hour that she mentions in her diary. It was very moving to be there.

The Anne Frank House in the middle with the black door.

The houses across the street from the Anne Frank House.

Then we drove through another part of town to the oldest windmill still standing. It was built in 1600 something.

The mix of Modern buildings with the Gothic is really cool. You could spend days driving around this city. Although, that would cost you. Gas is $9 a gallon here and it costs about $2000 to get a drivers license. That's why there are thousands of bicycles here with their own separate lanes and bikes have the right of way over cars and pedestrians.

After our tour, Kira and I were dropped off in town to explore. We had such big plans.... (a canal boat tour and a visit to the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum) we went to a couple shops then it came a torrential downpour. Everyone was just getting off work as it was 5:30, all the museums were closed so we started walking back to the ship through the hoards of people coming out of the train station. We walked about a mile in the downpour back to the terminal. We could have stuck it out and not had the crowds but for some reason it is so hard to get your sense of direction in a downpour and we were somewhere close to the red light district and didn't want to find ourselves there so we gave up. We didn't miss much, since the rain continued like that. We missed our three hours to explore but it just means we must come back.  :)