Sex, Weed, and Anne Oh my

Welcome to Amsterdam...For so many of you your mind quickly goes to is that the place with the drugs and free sex laws? And maybe you think about that little girl who was in the holocaust who lived there. Well I think you'd be buggin' the locals. Apparently the locals hate this about their fair town. It is unfortunate that the neat history and amazing architecture of this Low Country has been overshadowed by its new tourism industry - which from what I was told bugs the local crowd and they simply "put up with it."

Well that aside we had an amazing time here - we drove a long time from Brussels and ended up in some suburbanish town where our hotel was. We had some downtime and that is when I put up my first post on the Internet from London. We walked the neighborhood and mom and I ate at a Pizza place you can see in the pictures. The next day we toured the city and saw some great stuff. We went on a boat tour of the canal, we saw the flower market, a huge flea market, and then went to Anne Franks House. That was especially moving. I've been here before but I don't think I was old enough to comprehend the importance of the Anne Frank house. That was definitely my favorite part of Amsterdam. Last time I was there it was the end of my trip and I was tired and wanted to go home. I think I appreciated the city a lot more this time. it is really quite a neat city. It is a bit on the dirty side and they HAVE to do something about their traffic control. I felt like no matter where we turned we would be hit by traffic, and I'm talking bike traffic. We get it Amsterdam, you use bikes - that is so neat and we love that you are doing you part to save the environment but do you have to be so rude and violent? they go fast, and don't stop. You better watch out for them. There were many intersections where you had to watch for bikes from both directions, cars from both directions and trains from both directions. All this while navigating our gaggle of 50 around. It was awesome!

One of the highlights was when we got to the I AMsterdam block letters then some people came up to me because they noticed my Seattle t-shirt I was wearing. They asked me about Seattle, where I was from, and then wanted to take some pictures of me on the letters for some travel magazine for Holland. I said I would (although to be honest, I'm not sure they really asked) and next thing I knew I was holding myself in an "extreme" pose, as the lady put it, on the letter. I was sitting in the "a" and stretching one leg out and holding had my hands up above my head on the top part of the A...it was so odd. Mom got some pictures of it happening, and they aren't in this batch...but it was funny.

enjoy!