Amsterdam gives me the munchies

This posting covers my travels to and in amaterdam, Saturday August 18 through Monday, August 20th

SATURDAY AUGUST 18

With all of the fun and excitement from Paris that I could handle under my belt it was time to head on to a new destination.  The options were varied, but I had a few recommendations to see Amsterdam, some more compelling than others.  Seeing the canals and Anne Frank's place were the two that won me over and thus another destination selected and another train ride booked.  Of course, it wouldn't be fun if there wasn't adventure in booking.  Yes, Friday night was spent trying to use three different websites and who knows how many attempts to officially book my ticket to Amsterdam.

The train ride itself was incredibly unremarkable.  Ok, I ended up changing seats with a lady so she and her man could talk to each other without me being right in the middle of their conversation. That meant I ended up with the Portuguese Don Juan and his "woman" and helper-dude.  She spent most of the train ride getting him paper, dialing his phone, writing down notes and somehow being sweet talked into doing all of this.  She was gushing each time, seriously????  Fortunately they were not on for the full 3 hour ride and the insanity was put to rest, at least in front of me.  

Picture of train station (bc yeah, just not that many pics of Amsterdam to show off :) ) 

After a quick nap, it was time to walk the city and see what she had to offer, other than streets, so confusing that it felt like every 1 out of 2 people had a map in their hands saying "WTF".  Of course, it is in part this crazy meandering of streets and canals, that gives the city it's charm.  It grew oranically and has stayed that way. 

Picture of canal below my hostel window.  Pretty cool

 As my intent of Amsterdam was to take it easy, upon finding a group of companies doing canal tours, I decided to take a ride.  These pics were all take with the pocket cam, as I left the dslr in the room.  They're not the greatest bu they get the point across

Inside of canal boat

Buildings on the canal, hopefully you can swim if you fall out the window


Yup, that boat smacked into us from behind, after another smacked into the front of us. And you thought dangers in the waters only came from sharks.  

That blurry door used to be a jail.  Hopefully it didn't flood too much.

That three story set of windows.  Yeah.  Thats a house.  The whole house.  

RED LIGHT DISTRICT

My canal tour ended where it began, which was right near the central station, which was also right near the district.  I went through a journey to see what was to be be seen, and wow, this stuff really happens.  Ladies just tapping on windows, as a sign that they want you to come in.  A fellow in France was telling me that it was the same price regardless of who was selected.  I was surprised to see a few grandmothers and maybe great grandmother's dressed in their lingerie.  I guess everyone, has their perfect idea of what they want.  I've never been one for prostitutes and thus, the comedic entertainment value is where this tour ended for me.

SUNDAY AUGUST 19

I woke up to do my long run for the week and get in a bit of sightseeing.  I decided, that my goal was to only run along canals and see where I ended up.  I did about 15 miles in various parts of the city, stopping for water a couple times, as it was HOT and humid.  Again, it was cool to know that even in a city with about the same population as Columbus, Ohio, you can run in nature the entire time, and you didn't need to drive to get there.  

After a bite to eat and a nice quick nap, I found my way to the Heineken factory tour.  Heck, I did Guinness and Jameson, might as well do Heineken as well I thought.  Besides, it comes with a few beers, what's the harm.  Overall, the tour was on par with the Guinness tour.  It goes into the story about how the founder actually bought a brewery from some guy without knowing a thing about beer and eventually brought it to the scale that is it today, through taking some pretty good calculated risks.  

Within these are videos telling bout the various parts of the brewing process.

yes, Budweiser isn't the only company with a stable of horses. 

Miniature Mockups of the offices of Heineken in the early days

Boring laundry

   Yeah, laundry day.  I was like a deer in headlights without a clue on what to do with their crazy setup.  Fortunately there was a nice lady there who walked me through their 7 step process to turning on the wash machine and crazy process for getting the dryer to work.  I was able to quickly return the favor as a kid from sacramento who just graduated high school and came in with the same blank stare.  What's weird is that we were actually staying in the same hostel, in rooms right next to each other and the first time we met was at the laundromat a few blocks away.  We'd end up crossing oaths a few more times, especially because our rooms were adjacent to each other.  

DINNER AND MUSIC - DUTCH STYLE 

Okay, so the food that I had was not really Dutch, but the thing that I'm consistently finding is that every country essentially has the same food and in many cases its sadly, McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC.  Not horrific places, but heck, if I don't eat there in America, why would I have a meal there when traveling abroad.  After sniffing in the "fresh" air of Amsterdam all day long, I was getting the munchies and was up for something a bit different.  Upon me came Wok To Walk.  What a cool idea.  Walk in, order your wok food and walk out.  And this evening, I walked right out into a mini concert that they had going on in one of the squarea.   It was a weird mash up of English and Dutch tunes. Good for something to do while eating.

Adjacent church

The Anne Frank house - very unassuming from the outside. 

And for my triathlete friends, this is the shirt some kid was wearing while I was waiting in line to go into the Anne Frank house.  I think we need to outlaw him.  

The rest of my time in Amsterdam, was spent just meandering around the city without much on the to do list.  Here are a few random pics

Everybody loves star wars

Dam square

Apparently you don't need to watch where you're going on a bike

The cool and most annoying thing about Amsterdam houses is that the stairs are so steep, that you can't realistically bring a lot of furniture up them, so all of the houses have a hook at the top, and you simply bring the furniture through the front windows.  Hello, ikea

Canal shot

The globe is  made out of pop bottles. Pretty cool

building in the shape of a ship