Hallo
At the same time as being a real eye-opener, Amsterdam is a beautiful city. We arrived on Monday afternoon and had our first introduction to stairs in Amsterdam. Rach had told me about their experiences, but nothing can prepare you for how steep the stairs in houses/hotels are! They guy that runs the place that we stayed was laughing at us and instantly knew that it was our first trip to Amsterdam. There were three flights that we had to climb to get into our room and without joking, they must have been on a 25 degree angle.
After settling and trying to get the stupid wifi to work for longer than 5 minutes, we set off to explore the city. Our hotel was close to Ann Frank's House, so we opted to do that in the evening when the lines weren't quite as long. Having read the book years ago and really enjoying it, the visit to the house was great. It is very well put together and quite confronting.
Yesterday morning we did another walking tour, which again was very informative. It gave us our first glimpse at the red light district, which through the day doesn't look much different to a normal neighbourhood. You could quite easily walk by and not even notice the girls in the windows. We visited again last night and it was quite different. It was very busy, lots of lights and much better looking girls. The youngest is 18 and the oldest 75 (who has been working the red light district for 30 years). It was an eye-opener, but very interesting to see.
Later in the afternoon we went to the Heineken Experience, which is the original brewery. It was fantastic and much better than I had expected. At the end of the visit, you sit at the world bar and have 2 complimentary drinks. The tables are screens and when you put a glass down, coasters automatically appear on the screen under the beer, very clever. There are also images from around the world being shown around the perimeter of the room. We also hired a Canal Bike, and pedaled up and down the canals for about an hour. This was great fun, and another way to see the beautiful city.
Today we have already ran to catch our initial train, then ran to catch a connecting train, so it is nice sitting now and knowing that we will be arriving in Berlin in about 5.5 hours time.
Hope everyone is well.
Ange & Turls xx
PS I know I am very behind with photos – will try to do in Berlin
