Amsterdam

It wouldn’t be right to go to Netherlands and not visit Amsterdam, plus it was only a 30 minute train away. I started the day with a yummy breakfast, espresso, cats, and the sun.

The walk to the train station, just wow.

When I made it to Amsterdam I realized Amersfoort is just a tinier version of the city. I had some things to do in mind, but I left a lot of time for just walking around and window shopping.

I was getting pretty hungry and looked for some places to stop in. Netherlands was expensive, but Amsterdam was the most expensive. Especially with the conversion, most spots charged $30-40 for lunch. I saw a cute Vietnamese restaurant with the name of a city I went to. I didn’t go because they ended up being closed but I don’t think I would’ve gone because of the price anyways. I stopped in at a cafe to hold me over until later.

I started walking around town again and happened to walk past the Ann Frank House. I heard about it last minute in Netherlands but the tour tickets apparently sell out so fast, you have to pre book months ahead. So unfortunately I couldn’t go on the tour but the back story I read really interested me.

It slowly got cold and rainy so I took shelter for a while and got some food at a little burger/sandwich joint.

I found an interesting museum that I wanted to visit. It was in the red light district, which is a very interesting part of Amsterdam.

It was about $15 for an audio tour at your own pace. I didn’t know much about how and why prostitution was legal in the Netherlands but it gave a lot of insight on how everything works for safety, payment, etc.

These were the red lit windows you would see walking through the red district. The women would get their customers this way by sitting in the window for all to see.

I took as long as I wanted in the museum because it was still cold and wet outside. But eventually I had to leave and explore again. I slowly made my way back to the huge train station. It was only 7 pm but I was so tired from walking and decided I didn’t want to catch a cold walking anymore in this weather.

I’ll definitely visit Amsterdam again because there’s still so much to see.