Canals. Cheese. Amsterdam.

Breakfast& bibles

This morning the hostel fed us. And it was a great breakfast. Museli. Have you heard of it? Well the rest of the world has.  In addition they has boxes of chocolate flakes. Seriously chocolate flakes. And to balance it out a banana. 

See. Breakfast and bibles. The Christian hostel even has their own bible. Don't worry, I took a copy. Will give it to Kayla. For some reason I think she will love that the Christian hostel ten minutes away from the red light district in Amsterdam gives out bibles. 

Canals

Then it was time to walk to the Anne Franke house. We got so lost. 

But the canals were awesome. I had a really, really bad clothing & hair day. That's shouldn't be allowed. Whatever. It probably had to deal with we were so late to the Franke house and we heard horror stories of how long the line can be and while we had tickets, we were late and lost! So many people helped is find it but then we had to run. Run through the streets in the cold. It's hard. 

Made it. 

Anne Franke House

No pictures allowed inside. The annex was much bigger that I had expected. The stairs so steep. The empty rooms with the the kids height penciled on the walls. Her diary has sold over 70 million copies. I've read it multiple times. Walking through the place she hid, seeing the original bookcase that kept then safe for a time, was moving. 

What an experience. Sometimes it's hard for me to read and learn about an event or person and then connect that in my brain to something tangible. Like that it really happened. She really climbed the same stairs that I climbed and walked those halls. So glad we had the opportunity to visit this place of remembrance. 

Dam Square

Sure has a great name. Souviener shopping for the girls. Cool Dutch shoes. Lots of them. 

Cheese Tasting

Oh. My. Word. I ate so much cheese. We didn't eat lunch. But we did have a cheese tasting. In the basement. With 6 kinds of cheese. They were delicious. Okay lies. I loved the first three that were young cheeses but as they got older my facial expressions got more and more grotesque. Especially the three year old one, puke. Good for me, that's the expensive one anyway. 

But really cheese tasting with my own guillotine and different types of juices. I don't even like juice but when were tone is doing cheese and wine and you get fancy juice you drink it. Check out my rating: 

Really though, this was so much fun! I loved this experience and I love cheese! I got a huge wedge of it to bring home. America I'm bringing you some Amsterdamian cheese! Ha.

Waffles, stroop 

Of course more food to talk about. I just need to do all this good food now because once I'm in china I'm sure I will have not much to blog about except the disgusting things I come across. 

When my coworker Julie went to Amsterdam last year she brought back these waffles full of caramel, that were incredible! I knew I had to get them but I wanted a fresh one. Oh and a giant fresh one I found! Delicious! But I still havnt found a good packaged one and I only have half a day left. 

Lost

We seem to get lost a lot here. A lot. Like the red light district was literally 1 block behind our hostel and it took us 45 minutes to find.

Red Light District 

The place is so Raunchy. They have windows full of women. I don't want to know how the rest works I'm just glad it's illegal in America. But I did see a HUGE swan.

I've never seen one that big.

On our walk we saw to a of beautiful streets and there were Christmas decorations up.

Wok & Walk 

Finally we went to dinner and had some incredible yellow curry. I love yellow curry!

See how much I loved it.

We ended the night back at the hostel for Christian mic night. That was interesting but Rosie sang and did some group dance.