Amsterdam

We drove several hours from Bruges to Amsterdam. I must embarrassingly admit that I though Amsterdam was in Denmark :( It's in the Netherlands. Reminder for me to study basic geography, let alone culture!

It's a legit city. I drove on a highway with 14 lanes across both sides of highway (7 each way). The speed limit was 100 kmph. Similar to the UK, everyone followed the speed limit, apparently those cameras really do work. The hotel staff told me that tickets are issued as low as 4 kmph over the limit - I'm a bit nervous!

Once you're in the city, the somewhat predictable bikes and mopeds take over. But wow are there bikes, there must be 100 bikes at every corner.

We started at the Anne Frank house. It was almost a 3 hour wait to get in. We knew it would be long, but not that long. Given that time, I made good friends with all the people around me whilst the girls wandered around shopping. At one point I did hear two locals go by in their bikes as say "I've never seen the wait so long".

We had a great experience in the house. I wondered how my daughters would perceive it. My oldest had been well prepared in school, so she learned a lot. Seeing the rooms and her diaries is quite impactful. The one message from her dad that stuck with me was "most parents don't know their kids". He was saying that because his perception was that Anne's diaries were much deeper than she ever portrayed in reality. I find it a slightly controversial and memorable statement. Oh, before I forget, there was an oustanding violin player entertaining the queue. And, when it started to rain, the staff brought out umbrellas, very nice.

We then walked through the recommended neighborhood known as Jordaan. Honestly didn't see much there. 

We then walked all around the water based roads. It doesn't take long to see Amsterdam is heavily influenced by marijuana. It was interesting to see that shops weren't parallel to the water as I expected, all shops were on the roads perpendicular to the water, it seemed counterintuitive and "off the beaten path". There's also a heavy music influence in Amsterdam, we liked that part.

We walked back to our car to be extremely disappointed. Someone had smashed our back windshield and stolen a suitcase! :( we called local parking garage security and the police. We figured out that 2 iPads were in that suitcase, so the guess is that the criminals used a signal detection device to find them. We're still in the middle of insurance conversations. Very disheartening, but we're healing. 

We drove back to Brussels for our flights. When we checked in for our flights, I said "we're flying to Brussels", whilst we were standing in Brussels. The lady tried not to laugh, so I said I must still be flustered about the bag. Given the story, she didn't charge us for any bags, so big props to EasyJet!