Bye Bye, Berlin - Allo Amsterdam!

So here we are in lovely Amsterdam, a beautiful city surrounded by canals, a kind of upgrade from Venice!

We arrived here yesterday after a 7 hour train ride from Berlin, which went by surprisingly fast. Our hostel is clean but sort of sketchy, and both the showers (with practically no water pressure) and the breakfast (stale bread with cheese... and the cheese had been sitting out so long that the edges of it had dried out and hardened). Nonetheless, our room is nice. We opted for a private room, since we are at the end of the trip and are getting sick of sharing a room with strangers.

We ventured out for a walk last night to check out the city. We ate dinner at a yummy Chinese restaurant called Wok to Walk (reminded me of the cooking show Wok with Yan), then strolled around a bit. We grabbed a beer at a local bar, then headed in for the night as the long train ride had us tired out!

This morning we woke up early in search of the Amex office, where we were hoping to cash our last traveler's cheques. Unfortuntely, our travel guide lied to us and we could not find the office, but we stumbled upon another exchange rate that took nearly no commission and gave us a good rate.

Then we strolled over to the Anne Frank Huis. I found this to be one of the more emotional Holocaust memorials. We walked through the jam and meat seasoning factory, above which the Frank family hid from the Nazis. We were also able to go behind the bookcase and through the secret door, up to the Annex, which is where Anne and her family lived. It was a little bigger than we were expecting, but by no means was it large or luxurious. It was really strange to walk through their living quarters and see the postcards that Anne had posted on her wall, or to touch the original kitchen counter where they had prepared the little food that their hosts snuck in for them. Perhaps the most striking part was reading the original information cards from the Nazi files. Each family member had their own card, listing personal information and the names of their family members. Displayed in the same frame were the locations and dates of that person's death. In the background, an interview with Anne Frank's best friend describing her last encounters with Anne played. The museum also displayed Anne's original diary, and an interview with her father, the only family member who survived the Holocaust. All in all, it was a great museum and memorial - in my opinion, one of the best we have seen.

Next, we went to the Van Gogh museum, which was AWESOME. We spent a ton of time looking at the evolution of his work from when he first decided to become an artist, all the way up until his suicide. Surprisingly, his art career lasted only 8 years, and over these 8 years his work really changed. It was a fascinating museum.

We just got back from the Rijksmuseum, which was a little underwhelming after seeing Van Gogh's work. It was cool to see some of Rembrandt's pieces, especially some of the more famous ones, but all in all, the Van Gogh museum topped it.

We are about to head over to the Heineken Brewery for a tour, and will spend the rest of the day exploring the city. Tomorrow, we head back to Paris to round out our adventure with a day trip to Normandy.