Amsterdam: red light, anyone?

Last weekend we went to Amsterdam. The bus to the airport actually took longer than the flight, something that us kiwis still find amazing. After locating our hostel, we immediately caught up with the lovely Julia van Luijk (and her boyfriend Alex), who is studying there. It was handy having someone who spoke the lingo, although all the dutch spoke beautiful English and apparently are not insulted by rude tourists who don't learn dutch before they go.

The following day we explored some of the multitude of canals including the Grachtengordel - the ring of three around the city centre that were built in the 17th Century. The most amazing thing was the huge number of bikes parked just about everywhere. They were mostly what we'd consider old fashioned ladies bikes and none of them really looked new but they were all locked because apparently bike thievery is even more rampant there than in other parts of the world.

We caught up with Julia again in a real cafe (something that is lacking in Edinburgh) before braving the queue for Anne Frankhuis (Anne Frank's house - the one with the green doors in the photo to the right). It was surprisingly large inside and took up two stories; for some reason I'd alway imagined it would be small and poky. Still, it was pretty sad and thought provoking. To cheer ourselves up we went for a delicious home cooked dinner at Julia & Alex's apartment.

The following morning we checked out the Coster Diamond Workshop (Mark refused to by me a £5000 necklace, talk about stingy!) followed by the History Museum, which kindly had lots of signs in English. It was pretty cool to learn about the city, including that it's built on a giant bog, which kind of explains why some of the houses are a bit wonky. They have to put piles 13m down to sand and gravels (which aren't that stable either).

Following this we decided some more culture was in order so we went for a jaunt around the red light district. We'd be warned that the colours around the windows with the girls in them meant different things, and sure enough, the blue lights indicated that they weren't girls at all...

We're arranged to meet Pascal and Kristyn (recently arrived from NZ via the States) early that day but had missed them, so luckily managed to meet up in the evening for a spot of dinner. On our last day we went market shopping with them (and found some humorous shaped chocolates that Kristyn just couldn't resist taking photos of - check out their blog for those) followed by a 75 minute canal ride.

I also caught up with Julia for a last minute goodbye coffee. Hopefully not a goodbye for too long though!

Munt tea, anyone?