Amsterdam

In the post about Paris I said I'd post a story about the Netherlands part of the Europe trip. I'd better do that before I forget!

Amsterdam was the first city in Europe that we went to on that trip. Our flight had been long and I was TIRED. (WHY did that flight attendant keep giving that woman food every few minutes when all she did was throw it back up? That was my flight over to Europe. UGH!) We rode a bus from the airport to our hotel outside of Amsterdam. It was at a little town called Monnikendam. The tour guide took anyone who want to go back to Amsterdam to walk around. I'm reasonably sure I'm the only one who didn't go. I felt a little bad about that but I was sooooo tired. I took a bath and rested for about thirty minutes and felt a lot better.

One of the places we were going the next day was nearby. It was a little "wooden shoe / cheese factory" and store. (Read tourist trap;-) I walked over to that and looked around for a few minutes and then decided to go into the little village. BINGO! Now that was more my style. And it wasn't on our tour so it was icing on my cake.

Monnikendam is a quaint little fishing village. According to Wikipedia it first became a city in 1355. The streets are cobblestone, the buildings old and history just seeped into my skin. It was fabulous. I walked along the docks, looked at the fishing boats and their crews and had a blast.
Do I regret not going with the group that afternoon? Nope, I found my own little bit of happiness walking among folks in a historic fishing village.

The next day included the Anne Frank Museum, a boat ride through the canals looking at the neat city of Amsterdam, an art museum and something about diamonds. (A store/museum maybe?) I didn't have the patience to wait in the lines at the art museum so didn't do much of that. I could have stayed at the Anne Frank museum for a few more hours. It had a lot of displays and videos about the holocaust as well as Anne's story. The boat ride was a little cold but looking at the city by boat was the way to go. You probably know this but they ride bikes in Amsterdam - a lot of bikes. That was neat to see more bikes than cars.

When we were leaving for the next leg of the trip we saw a lot more of the windmills and tulips I had been expecting as well as the canals. We had seen some between our hotel and Amsterdam but many more on our way out of the city. Overall a great way to start the trip.