Amsterdam

This morning we caught a tram into the city with some others in the group. First we visited Anne Frank's House Museum. It was really fascinating looking through the house and reading all the snippets of information from her diary and accounts of friends of the family. We thought it was a good museum as it had enough information but not too much information as one often finds in museums.



A statue of Anne Frank outside the museum.


From there, we ran a couple of errands - posted some postcards and exchanged some money before heading to the centraal station - a sister station to Liverpool St station in London.

We then headed down the main shopping drag - Nieuwendijk and Kalverstraat, where we found this amazing food "market" which sold all sorts of freshly prepared food for lunch from panini's, baguettes, to hot cooked food like soup, stirfrys and the list goes on. The food was delicious!

Just a nice picture of one of the many canals in the city.

After lunch we decided to check out the flower markets which we were told to be something worth seeing. However we were pretty disappointed as we discovered stalls which while still sold flowers were selling a lot more bulbs and cacti - and wasn't quite what we were expecting which was a large display of flowers of varying colours.



Amsterdam is also famous for its bicycles - check out the left hand photo for a multi-level parking for bikes alone!





We made a quick stop at the library for some free internet and then made our way to the Heineken Experience. It was really good including some history, motion simulator through the bottling process and one on a horse & cart through Amsterdam city, and other interactive activities such as DJ'ing and karaoke. The tour also included free beers along the way!







After that, while passing some time before dinner, we tried some Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Very yummy but very expensive!

Dinner was a Chinese buffet. Following which we had our last party night on a boat cruising down the canals in Amsterdam.