Oh Amsterdam, what a fabulous time we had. We arrived late Friday night and took a cab to the apartment we were staying for the weekend. When we booked Amsterdam, we realized that all hostels in Amsterdam were either EXTREMELY pricey, booked or didnt have the greatest reviews. We turned to this perfect website I found called http://www.airbnb.com/ which is a great service that allows people who own apartments or houses to host bed and breakfast type of accomadations to guests. It was a great alternative to the normal hostel or hotel route and was very affordable. I recommend reading ALL reviews before hand to get a good feel of the hosts and if it matches up with your plans in that city. SO we arrived to Sophie and Pieters apartment and were greeted with a smiling Sophie (Pieter was gone for the weekend). She had a room set up for us with two beds, blankets and towels - amazing!
The next morning we decided to hit the city early so we ate breakfast, took the Tram (which was really simple to use) into the heart of the city and began to explore. We started at Dam square, which is the heart of historical Amsterdam. We saw the Royal Palave (which unfortunately was under construction), Madame Tussauds Wax Museum (still don't understand the interest in these places) and a WWII monument. We began just walking along the main streets and then some random side streets. We saw Nieuw Market which is where popular bars and restaurant are situated. A street over is the Red Light District, which we walked through of course. Not going to lie... it's not worth going to if you're not going at night. The women we saw were... well let's just say they weren't anything special. We then went to this AMAZING spot for lunch called Burger Bar - ABSOLUTELY delicious. We got home made burgers and the famous fries and mayo, SO YUMMY (yes I have pictures don't worry. After that we walked to the Anne Frank museum and had a visit. After that we headed t Rembrandtplein, which is a fairly famous little square and then headed towards the Heineken Brewery. After that, we just walked EVERYWHERE. We saw a lot of canals, bridges and BOATS. Unfortunately the line ups to the Van Goh museum was INSANE so we didn't get a chance to visit :(The following day, we packed our backpacks and headed to the train station to store them in lockers. We walked around the shopping district (KALVERSTRAAT), took a boat tour and walked some more. To be honest Amsterdam was great and we got a lot of walking done BUT... we both noticed it was VERY dirty. A lot of garbage everywhere, some of the water in the canal had empty beer bottles or trash and there was a lot of dirty parts. Also, there was SO MUCH under construction. So a lot of the beautiful buildings were hard to see because of that. It was an ok visit, but I don't think I'll be back for a while.
Dam Square
Canal
Yummy, Burger Bar - A MUST in Amsterdam
nom nom nom nom nom
Rembrandt Square
More canals
Bikes were EVERYWHERE (of course)
