I adore Amsterdam! Everyone rides bikes, Everyone! And they have such a fantastic system for it with bike lanes and lights set up around the entire city. However, you could spot the tourists everywhere, standing in the bike lane. I finally tried the lava game with Anna, "sidewalk, good- bike lane, LAVA! Dont walk in the lava or you'll melt". The weather was much like Seattle summertime, and was quite gloomy, but the people were all so friendly and chill. We stayed with a really nice cat, Robyn, from couchsurfers the first couple of nights. He had an amazing 360 view from his rooftop terrace, and a spare bedroom for Anna and I. He made us coffee and played guitar for us in the mornings- quite the charmer. One night the three of us made sushi, and then he and I biked to a pub that had fantastic live jazz after- it was a great evening. The other nights we stayed in a hotel called Qbid, and it was...interesting? Our room had lights above the bed that changed colors and settings, there was no bathroom door, and it felt a bit like a spaceship.
We hit up several of the museums- contemporary art, church of Amsterdam (really cool), wax museum (silly, but so entertaining), Tulip (come on, it was free), FOAM (photography), and...a couple more. I thought the church floors were really cool- they had large, engraved stone tomb tops. We did the canal tour- I believe they said there are 16 canal channels. The canals and the harbor are fresh water. We walked through the botanical garden and a great park (that I can't think of the name). We also checked out the coffee shops and walked through the red light district and saw the prostitutes in the windows (when in Rome). And for whatever reason I never get tired of zoos, so we went to the zoo. They had a baby elephant, and a baby giraffe that was playing with a gazelle (cuteness overload!).
The public transport was really easy to navigate, everyone spoke English, the city and buildings are really clean and beautiful, and I could totally live there.
Couple randoms:
The wax museum, for whatever reason, had a haunted house in the middle of it that scared the bajesus out of me. They had a bunch of actors with chainsaws, and ones jumping out yelling at you- I don't think there was anything made of wax, and it was not good on my heart.
There was a disgusting trough outside of central station for men to pee- no walls, no doors, just these little dividers so you can't see their junk but otherwise you're just out in the public on the sidewalk peeing.
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