Tuesday/Wednesday 1-2 Aug 2006

The kids and I are off to Amsterdam (Amy has to work, sucks for her). The weather had it in for us as cooler temperatures set in with occasional showers throughout our visit. We were pleasantly surprised with how “English” friendly this European city was and had no troubles finding our way around.

We dodged these showers during our bicycle tour of the city and a trip out along the Amstel dike to visit an actual windmill and a cheese and wooden shoe factory. The tour guide on this bike ride was probably the most entertaining of any I’ve had since our arrival. Stuart was informative and his use of the language captured the true spirit of the lifestyle in Amsterdam. Not sure about his advice about mushrooms and The Van Gogh Museum though.

We walked through the Rijksmuseum and viewed several of the classic masterpieces of the Dutch artists. One of the things we came away with was the idea that Rembrandt tried to indict a murderer within his painting De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch), a Dutch version of The DaVinci Code if you will. Doug and I plan on researching this further.

Our walk through the Red Light District was dampened by, well…. Rain, as it poured when we were there. We did get the gist of the area though taking in all the “sights” that it had to offer.

One evening we enjoyed dinner on a canal side table and even sampled the local fare for lunch as we tried Pannekoeken (Dutch pancakes). They weren’t bad. Picture an omelette with pancake batter instead of eggs.