Jamsterdam

Hokay well we turned up in Amsterdam totally exhausted from our time in Berlin. We found our hostel with relative ease and found to our relief that almost every person we met spoke fluent English. However, the hostel was a bit groz, and the German girls we were sharing with spent the ENTIRE time hanging out in our room off their faces, which didn't really bother us but didn't really give us much personal space. So the first evening we dumped our bags and headed out to explore.

Our hostel was in a pretty cool area, and we wandered around taking it all in. We had a couple of very overpriced drinks, but we were tired and it was freezing cold so we retired early to our beds. We got up the next morning, much revived and ready for some proper sightseeing.
First, we went to Dam Square to look around.

After this, we went to the Anne Frank Huis which was really interesting. The Nazis took all the furniture away after the Franks were arrested, but apart from that the annex was left just as it was when they were in hiding. It was really moving to see where they had stayed hidden for so long - they had so little room despite the fact that 8 people lived there for 2 years.

That afternoon we walked to the Museumplein and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was also very cool. As well as lots of Van Gogh stuff they had an exhibition on Bonger's collection, which mainly consisted of Redon and Bernard.

In the evening, we made friends with some people from our hostel and we all went out together to see the red light district. In what appeared to be a pattern forming, it turned out to be Amsterdam's Gay and Lesbian Pride weekend so there were street performances all around. We had a fun night hanging out with our new, mainly Canadian, friends.

The next morning, we headed off to Centraal Station to catch our train to Paris!