This is in the flower market in Amsterdam, it is really amazing, there are hundreds and hundreds of different kinds of tulip bulbs, as well as other flowers, and many fresh flowers on display also.

During our stay in Amsterdam, we went to Anne Frank’s house, it was very small and if you’ve read the book you definitely have to see this one day.  One highlight for us was visiting the Van Gogh Museum, we both really loved his paintings and it was really interesting to see the progression of his paintings throughout his life.  We spent many hours walking around the canals, and went on a walk around the far western side of Amsterdam that has some smaller canals and are away from the main centre.  We found these canals to be much prettier and the centre, probably because no-one really goes there except the residents so it was very well maintained, with far more trees and gardens around the houses.  We were impressed that all of the bridges (of which there are probably thousands, if not, at least hundreds) that cross all of the canals all open in the middle to let boats through.  We had expected a few main ones to open, but from what we saw it seemed that most if not all of them opened which we thought was cool.  By the end of our stay we were used to watching out for all the bikes as well as cars, it makes crossing any roads very interesting and you have to stay alert for various kinds of traffic at all times.

This was definitely a good choice of accomodation and added to our ‘Amsterdam Experience’.  The boat was really spacious inside, and 2 bedrooms, and large-ish lounge and a full kitchen, which we were able to cook yummy breakfasts each morning of omlette, and a couple of dinners also (including a random banana and snowpea curry, which we can surprisingly recommend – yum yum).  We stayed in a residential part of the city so it was nice and quiet at night, but only a few minutes walk to all the centre of town action.

This was one of us with the canals of Amsterdam in the background.

We found this windmill a couple of minutes walk from our houseboat, very handy with a brewery at the bottom of it.

One of the many canals in Amsterdam, we spent most of our time walking around the canals.  It was relatively easy to find our way around as they are all in a grid that was easy to understand.

Needless to say both Dre and Pants enjoyed the Heineken Brewery.  It was a really interesting brewery and they got to have Karen’s share of the free beers as well!