Amsterdam Day 2

For our second day in Amsterdam, we decided to rent bicycles and ride out into the country. Amsterdam is a not a very large city. You can easily ride your bike for about 20 minutes and be out in the country. The weather decided to be very uncooperative this day and it rained pretty much the entire time we were on bikes. Ugh. We also got very, very lost trying to follow a bike tour. We didn't have very specific directions and man- we probably biked an hour and a half out of our way. But we did eventually find the right path and got to see a few very old windmills.

I am soaking, soaking wet in this picture. I knew that it was going to rain on us and I didn't know what to do with my hair for the day. Ya know, I have to have good looking hair for our pictures. So I decided to go with pigtails. They are my hairstyle of choice when I go skiing, go to amusement parks or if I know I'm going to get rained on.

Another old windmill. Once we got back to the city, we returned our bikes and decided to do some more walking tours. Here, I am sitting in the middle of Dam Square with the Royal Palace behind me; just doing a little reading to prepare for our walking tour. Here is the other side of Dam Square. This is where the city of Amsterdam got its start in 1250. Fishermen built up the banks of the Amstel River with a dam and called the village Amstel-damme. We did a walking tour through Jordaan, Anne Frank's  neighborhood. It was my favorite part of Amsterdam- the architecture was unbelievable. We were able to see this red house which is labeled the skinniest house in all of Amsterdam. The house is really not this tiny, just an entry way to a larger house behind it. Real Estate is very expensive along this canal and the owners were taxed by the amount of street frontage. So that accounts for the small front!I still can't go over the amount of bicycles we saw or how many bridges there were.

The view in Jordaan. I've heard of a two person tandem bike- but a four person? This is the Westerkerk Tower. Rembrandt is buried underneath this church. The church also has a bell that rings every 15 minutes- it's the same bell that Anne Frank would hear while she was stuck inside her house.

I love the canals!

Here is the Anne Frank house. We didn't go in. The line was way too long for us! You can however see some of the paddle boats that we rented!

We saw a lot of house boats along the canals. Many of the were decked out with beautiful flowers.

I love this blue house. It looks like it is one of those fake houses on a movie set from this angle.



It's not! There is the other side!

I guess when there are millions of bikes in a city, it becomes necessary to do something to make yours stick out- just so you can find it again. I really wanted to take this pink bike for a spin!After our walk we had a great dinner at a Brazilian restaurant and then called it a night! We barely woke up in time for our flight and started our long journey home.