Day 16 - Amsterdam

The streets of Amsterdam are virtually silent from 5:00am to 9:00am. And nothing opens early - 10:00am at the earliest. We enjoyed the peace and quiet of the sleepy city and took advantage of some forced down-time. We decided to pack smaller bags with just enough for our stay here, and stow our larger bags in the lockers at the train station. The cost was just a couple dollars per day. Then we wandered about to find a place to eat breakfast. We broke down and had an egg McMuffin and hash browns at the ubiquitous McDonalds on the main drag across from the train station. This turned out to be the only time during our trip that we ate at an American franchise restaurant. And surprisingly, the coffee was actually quite good!

The weather turned quite dreary as the morning wore on. And we took a slow walk through town to the Van Gogh Museum; our major site-seeing attraction for today. The museum is very clean and modern with great lighting and large, roomy open spaces. It is well organized into collections and its easy to navigate the lay-out. We spent several hours enjoying the works of Van Gogh.

We wandered a bit through the flea-market-like bazaars where you can buy just about anything you can possibly think of. Then for a rest, we sat on a bench where the Amstel River enters the city, watching the myriad of people passing by. We walked back through the red light district, yep, prostitutes in the windows are a strange sight for Americans like ourselves. So we got some french fries in a cone, plopped ourselves down on another bench, relaxed and took in the oddness of it all for a while. Then we checked out a bike rental shop and planned our adventure for tomorrow.