God made the earth, but the Dutch made Holland

Last night we seccesfully made friends with six australians and two
Brits at the happy hour at the hostel. I'm constantly impressed by the
subtle cultural diffrences you can learn through conversation ( for
example, the aussies find it weird that every house does not have a
tall fence around it in the US)

This morning we got up and headed out to rent bikes. We rode around
Vondelpark, amsterdam's central park, for a while before heading over
to the museum area. The park is SOOO nice! It has weeping wilows
draping into ponds with bikers on a bridge in the background.

The first museum we went to today was Rijksmuseum. It has a variety of
things but it is most known for the Rembrandt collection, including
the milkmaid and the night watch (and many more).

When we left the museum Kevan was starving so we rode over to the
Albert Cuyp market and we ate at a yummy middle eastern restaurant.
The market was a huge street fair with stalls selling all sorts of
random stuff. It was fun to walk around and a good break from the
musuems because we went back to see the Van Gogh musuem.

The Van Gogh musuem was wonderful! They had a bunch of his self
portraits, sunflowers, and the bed room. They also did a great job at
explaining his life in conjunction with the paintings.

After the Van Gogh museum we decided to return the bikes so we would
not have to come back to this area tomorrow. Then we headed up to the
Anne Frank house. After waiting in line for an hour we got to go in.
It was a little unreal being there and realizing that these stairs or
that window are the same ones she was talking about in her diary.
There were also a lot of good videos with Otto frank, miep, and anne's
friend who saw her at the concentraiton camp.

On the way back to our hostel we stopped for Dutch pancakes for
dinner. It was basically like a big crepe and very yummy. Back at the
hotel we freshened up and then happened to run onto the aussies again.
We went with them to the red light district and just walked around and
people watched. After a successful but very busy day we made it an
early night and went home to sleep.