Saturday July 21st

Friday morning we found a cafe to have breakfast and instead we got a whole platter of food. So overwhelming but supa good. We went to the train station to pick up Liz's friend Pierre who's from Belgium.

First we went to the Van Gogh Museum which was quite amazing. I've seen his work in Paris but it was more interesting to learn about his path to becoming an artist and how sick he became towards the end of his life. We spent over 3 hours in the museum!

After the museum, we walked around the canals, picking up "stroopwafels," a Dutch delicacy that is two very thin waffles stuck together with a caramel-like syrup. It was really good but also quite sugary. We took the classic picture in front of the "I Amsterdam" letters with all the other annoying tourists and continued on walking. It's amazing to go street by street and still find each canal so beautiful in their own way. I so badly want to own a tiny townhouse here and a boat so I can have dinners and parties in the canals, it looks like so much fun!

Then we went to the Anne Frank house, luckily we bought our tickets online or else we would've had to wait over an hour! It was crazy to see the secret annex that her family hid in, it was actually rather big! I thought it was just one room but it had multiple rooms and levels. I can't imagine being cooped up in there every day...even more depressing is that her father was the only one to survive the Holocaust and Anne died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, 1 month before its liberation.

Afterwards we went bar hopping, trying all different kinds of beer. I really like Kriek and Liefmans which are berry flavored Belgian beer (Pierre recommended it, I think he may have a bias though...) It's funny how back at school I kind of detest beer but in Europe, even the cheap beer is so flavorful that I drink it so much more! It'll be a reverse culture shock going back to school and not having such good choices. We wandered around, unfortunately towards the Red Light District...yuck that was so awkward! It's crazy how accessible it is to do such repulsive things...

Figuring out the night transportation back to our hostel was really easy and efficient...come on Prague get it together!

Pierre left this morning to go back home for Belgium's National Holiday aka 4th of July. It was really fun to talk to him about living in Belgium and how it compares to the US.

Today we went to the Rijksmuseum, a famous museum containing works of Rembrandt and other Dutch artists. It also detailed on the history of the Netherlands which was interesting to see because I was able to recall facts from my history classes on high school.

A friend recommended to go on the cheesey canal cruise so we did and I'm happy we chose to do it. You really get a whole different perspective of places from being on the water. After we grabbed a Kriek at a cafe and then walked a bit more. It was sad to walk around the bars and see SO MUCH trash on the ground from the night before. Really disgusting and inconsiderate...
I've noticed there are lots of cats here that are able to roam around, even on top of bars! Pretty odd haha but cool to see a cat sitting on a bar stool.

Early day tomorrow as we have a day trip to Brugge, Belgium!

Doei,
Whit