Amsterdam

*Amsterdam!*

Last weekend I went for a couple of days to Amsterdam and had a lovely time. It's a unique city with two distinct sides-- one side is elegant and relaxed whereas the other side is filled with drugs and sex. You can go from a canal lined with beautifully gabled houses to a canal lined with prostitutes in windows next to "coffee" shops where drugs are sold in the matter of a single block. Even though the city has somewhat of an identity crisis, I liked it a lot there.

Friday we happened upon the Rijksmuseum, where paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer are exhibited. Rembrant's paintings were especially memorable-- pictures of them don't do them justice. There's so much intricacy in the actual works, it's really incredible.

*The kitchen maid, by Vermeer*


*Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, by Rembrandt*


*i love this statue of cupid-- he looks so mischievous!*

*lunch after the museum-- pancake with bacon and pineapple in it and Amstel--
cheers grandpa!*

That night we saw some of the major sites, walked through the red light district and went to a dance club where they played pretty horrible dance music-- remixed disco beats with a live saxophone.

*palace*

*oude kerk (old church) which is surrounded by the red light district*


*artwork in the sidewalk outside of the old church*


*statue of "belle" outside of the old church, asking for respect for sex workers*


*coffeeshop and sex shops in the red light district*


*giant shoe for tourists to sit in*

Saturday we went to Anne Frank's house which has been converted into a museum. That was a really moving experience, having read (but shamefully not finished) the diary in the 5th grade. There are videos from people who knew them and from those who helped to hide their family in the various rooms, as well as quotes from her diary painted on the walls. You can walk through the spaces where they hid, feeling how loud the floorboards are, how small the space was and how beautiful the sites from the windows are, making it all the more terrible to be trapped there.
At the end there was another exhibit featuring various freedoms (speech, press, religion, demonstrate, etc) and difficult situations where the viewer had to vote if the freedom should be allowed in that particular situation. At the end of each situation, the statistics for the viewers present and all museum visitors is tallied-- it's a really interesting interactive approach to the topic and it made everyone there think a lot, which was the ultimate goal of the exhibit.

*me outside of Anne Frank's house*

Later we took a canal boat tour of the city, which was relaxing, especially since it was nice and warm inside the boat!

*squinting into the sun on the canal boat that's floating down the Amstel river*

*old locks in one of the main canals*


*one of the 20,000+ houseboats in Amsterdam*

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Van Gogh museum, which was on my list of things to see. Our timing was bad, since we had a lot of free time in the evenings, but everything closes around 6. We needed another day, but we have projects to work on, so we came back.