A Day in Amsterdam

We were able to lay over for about ten hours in
Amsterdam(The Lonely Planet Travel guides are great) and do a quick run through of some points of interest.
Amsterdam was really cool and I would love to explore this city more one day. It was like heaven coming back to the tasty food and comforts of the west. Everyone was on bikes and they had dedicated bike lanes everywhere. The canals were cool to see, and the public transportation was great. They had a cool flower market that made me wish I had a garden right now.
As far as the seamy side of the city, we didn't make it to the red light district. We didn't quite know where it was, and I'm afraid of places like that so Cheyn had to tell me about how she walked by it before when she was in Amsterdam. We inadvertently walked past an adult bookstore, so, does that count? We also walked past some stores selling marijuana and mushrooms so we got that experience.
We Hit Three Museums:
Anne Frank House Museum

The museum was excellent. It was personal and had just enough info without getting me overwhelmed. It was fascinating to see the annex where the family hid and to see Anne's room where pictures from popular magazines remained on the wall. And then we were off to The Rijksmuseum

We had see the state art museum next. I love Rembrandt's paintings humanness and common dignity. I really love his commoners as biblical characters paintings. At the museum they praised Rembrandt for being one of the first artist to paint subjects as if they were in motion. They had a good collection including a couple giant paintings like Night Watch (pictured above). I guess its such an important painting to them that they made a statue version of it. Can you spot the person not originally in the painting?

The third museum we went to was the Van Gogh. It was impressive with over a hundred of his paintings displayed. I never knew he spent part of his life as an evangelist before he became a painter. I also didn't know Japanese art and color was influential on his style. This was one of my favorite museums as well as Cheyns.After that we headed back to the airport and we were on our way to Paris.