EuroTrip...Amsterdam, The Netherlands

My mom arrived on Friday the 19th here in Paris.  Once we got her things situated and dropped off at my apartment we went straight over to the Sacre Coeur to walk around inside the basilica.  I had already done this when my friend Lauren was here visiting me but she didn't get to the last time she was in Paris.  After we did that we walked around my neighborhood and bought a few souvenirs to take back to her friends at work.  I also got my friend Andrea a couple gifts as well.  Oh and I forgot to mention we had lunch at the Italian place down from my apartment called Pulcinella.  I got the tortellini with the truffle cream sauce and my mom got something kinda similar.  The cooks were heavy on the salt that day and anyone that knows me, knows I love salt!  Okay so back to the day...we had on the agenda to do the Fat Tire night bike tour that started at 6:00 so we stopped off for a beer at the Cafe Ziem and then got ready to book it over to the meeting spot.  The bike ride was a ton of fun.  It started off drizzling right when we pulled off but no big deal.  The night bike was a lot more biking and not as much talk, which is what I kinda prefer.  We were weaving in and out of the busy streets in the rain and it was just an awesome experience.  Don't have any pictures from it as we were using my mom's camera more and plus most of the places we stopped off, I had already been to and gotten pics of.  About an hour and a half into the bike ride we stopped off to get an ice cream and it was yum.  I got a caramel butter flavor and can't remember what mom got but I remember mine being better.  The rain started picking up a little heavier and I had a few complications with my bike as the chain kept coming off but one of the guides was able to fix it right away.  Another highlight was that we got to take a little cruise on a Seine River Boat.  We parked all our bikes and loaded up on the boat.  The guides brought along several bottles of wine for us to drink and we got up close views of the Eiffel Tower at night and when it sparkled at the top of the hour.  Once we got through with the tour we came straight back to my part of town since it was really late.  We grabbed a kebab for dinner and went to sleep as we had to catch an early morning train to Amsterdam from Gare du Nord.

The train station was a bit chaotic since a couple of the escalators weren't working and we had to lug our suitcases up the stairs and they were HEAVY.  Then we waited for them to post our platform number.  Getting on the train and finding our seats was pretty easy and we were off in no time.  We took a high speed train and the trip was only around 3 hours.  Being the internet junkie that I am, I was able to purchase some wifi and blog a little on the train.  Finally we were only 1 stop away from reaching Amsterdam and our train stops in a dark tunnel.  They come on the loud speaker and explain that there is something wrong with the train and it would be about 25 minutes.  Immediately after the conductor got off the loud speaker we hear a LOUD BOOM!  Several of us look around at each other with a worried look in our eyes.  Was that normal?  Was that a bomb?  Then about 10 minutes later we hear it again!  At this point I'm a little freaked about but finally our train started moving and all was okay.

Once we got to Amsterdam we knew we had to take a tram to get out to our little hotel.  We find a tourist information area and mom gets our tram pass for the next couple days.  We get on the tram and ride that sucker forever!  We were a little outside of the main areas but still just a few tram stops away.  We stayed at a quaint little 2 star place called Hotel Wilhelmina.  Our room had a little tv that played 1 English channel, Animal Planet!  Wow, I just decided from that last sentence I'm going into way too much detail!  Since we got to Amsterdam around early afternoon we hook it back into town and hit up the Heineken Brewery first.

I made mom be the guy, haha!

After the brewery it was onwards to the Anne Frank House.  They stayed open pretty late and from one of the travel books mom picked up they said to go around 6:30 in the evening because the line wasn't as long.  We weren't allowed to take pictures in the house but it was really neat.  It made you feel like you were the the time period when the family was hiding out.  I believe they were there for a little over 2 years before they were ratted out by someone and all sent to concentration camps.  Below is a picture of the outside of the house.

After the Anne Frank house we decided to switch it up all together and head to an entirely different type of museum.  The Sex Museum!  Whoa what a weird bunch of stuff!  Here are a few pics taken from inside, they are somewhat comical.

Somehow after the Sex Museum we were hungry, so we decided to eat at an Indonesian restaurant and have a "rice table" that mom had read about in one of her books.  Way too much food! We ate as much as we could and had to stop.  It was getting late after dinner and we headed back to our little bungalow and hit the sack.  The next day we were to do a bike tour and some more sightseeing.  We slept in the next day and went downstairs and grabbed a little free breakfast that was included in the price of the room.  It was less than stellar but the orange juice was decent.  We walked around town for most of the early afternoon and then caught the bike tour.  Since Fat Tire didn't have a branch in Amsterdam we went through Mikes Bike Tours and I would recommend taking this to anyone that visits the city.  The Dutch know how to ride a bike and Mike is very knowledgeable on all things about the city!  

This above is a picture of the Amstel River and around 10,000 bicycles are pulled from this river every year!

If you look closely you can see that some of the buildings in the background are actually a little crooked and are leaning sideways!

One of the many "coffeeshops" you can find in Amsterdam.  We didn't go into this particular one, but we did step inside one just to see what it was all about.  No purchases were made though, perhaps on another trip without ol' mom!

After the bike ride we took our guides advice and hit up the Pancake Company for dinner.  These weren't normal pancakes as you could get ones with meat, cheese, etc. inside them.  They were similar to a crepe.  Mom got The Hungarian and I got The Mexican and I really preferred her's over mind.  We should have share just one to be honest because they were giant and neither of us could finish ours.  Afterwards we went into a coffeeshop just to use the internet.  We were told they had computers with internet access and since our 2 star didn't offer wifi so I could get on my laptop, this was our excuse to step inside an Amsterdam coffeeshop!  Next we just headed back to the hotel since it was getting late. We had an early wake up call to get out to the airport for our next leg of the exciting EuroTrip!