The Country with two faces

Well, Amsterdam was a blast. It is funny how the two sides of Amsterdam are at two different ends of the spectrum. You either have the seedy, drug and sex scene or a whole slew of museums and cultural interests. Once you get past the train station, the atmosphere is very laid back and relaxed. There are always about a thousand people riding their bicycles, which you will be able to see when I post some of the pictures. It was cold there too. It is unfortunate because the weather has been really nice pretty much until Crystal landed and then it turned cold. She actually had to go out and buy a jacket because it was that cold out. Anyway, back to Amsterdam…the train ride from Luxembourg to Amsterdam is about 6 hours. The only potentially bad part about the train rides to and from was the connection time. We had about 4 minutes on the way there to make the connection in Brussels to get to Amsterdam and they were boarding our train on the way back already when we were transferring to go home, so we had to hustle with all our luggage, or since Crystal has a bad back…I had to hustle with all our luggage. But we made it. When we got to Amsterdam, at about 2pm on Saturday we went to our hotel. It was a very small hotel called Hotel de Paris, it got very good reviews on line. It was more like a large bed and breakfast. We liked it, it was clean and the people were friendly, but the rooms were so tiny. It was like sharing a shoebox! We were only there to sleep so we muddled through. The first place we went was Anne Frank’s house. This was top of my list of what I wanted to visit in Amsterdam. The line is always really long to get in, but thankfully it moved rather quickly. The house was left empty, as everything was confiscated when the Nazis came in to arrest the people living there, because that was how Anne’s father wanted it to remain. I really was interested in the interviews and personal accounts here and to see the house. I do think that they could have done a little more to draw you, but overall I am happy I went. From there we walked around a bit and got some dinner. After that is was time for our walking tour of the Red Light District, bet you did not even know that they had those. Well they do, and it was quite informative. The red light district was not as much of a shock as I thought it might be, maybe I am just too desensitized by what was on TV, but I just found it interesting.

The next day we did more or less the Museum Circuit, we went to Rembrandt’s house, the Amsterdam Dungeons, and the Torture Museum. Out of these Rembrandt’s house was my clear favorite. Rembrandt’s house not only displayed some of the works but it also had a demonstration of the etching process and an audio commentary to put the whole place in perspective. The Amsterdam dungeons made advertised itself as a historical reenactment when in fact it was more like a really good haunted house with some historical basis. It was still really good though, parts of it did scare the shit out of me, it just was not what I expected. The torture museum was displaying torture devices from around the Spanish Inquisition with some illustrations to put how the device was used in perspective, it was disturbing to say the least but still really interesting. After that we caught the last boat to one of the ramps closer to our hotel. By then we were tired and hungry and we walked past the Hard Rock Café and decided to eat there. Not bad, the usual for any of those places.
On our last day there we went to the Van Gogh Museum. This I think was my favorite. Partly because I really like the work and also because the commentary that we got to go along with it also put the work in perspective to what was going on in his life at the time and that really helped to see the progression of what was happening and tying it all in.
We took the train back to Luxembourg and we just made the connection in Brussels, they were already board the train when we arrived. We arrived back in Luxembourg at about 8:30pm. All in all Amsterdam was a lot of fun, I think that we are both really glad we went. Tonight we went to Metz for dinner with Laurence and took some more pictures. We went to a crepe restaurant. I did not know that crepes could be used for more than dessert, but the food was really good. I told Laurence that we will have to bring all my visitors back here so people who are visiting be prepared! Now in a few more days it is back to Paris again. I am just becoming the little world traveler!