Amadeus Hotel Haarlem

I think Amsterdam is the safest city I've ever been in - including Denver. The marajuana thing? I'm pretty sure it's a trick to keep people, tourists, from causing trouble. Went museum hopping. Van gough was nuts. I mean I knew that obviously, but the museum here arranged his paintings chronologically and his nuttiness is easy to see when you look at them like that. The energy in the paintings isn't something that comes through in prints. They look like they're about to explode off the canvas...

The three of us arrived in Brussels nice and early on Wednesday and headed on the train for Haarlem, the Netherlands. We stayed at the Hotel Amadeus which sits right on the Grote Markt in Haarlem. We got checked in and headed out for lunch and some beers. One of the items on the itinerary was lunch at one of the outdoor spots on the Grote Markt. We fulfilled that item while dealing with what seemed like 50 mph cold wind gusts. We survived by looking at the cool architecture and enjoying a few...

Up bright and early on Thursday for breakfast at the Hotel Amadeus before taking the train to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, we were in for a rainy day so we decided to focus on museums today in order to reduce the amount of time spent outside. Our first stop was the Anne Frank House. The museum takes you through what the building was used for (Otto Frank's spice business/warehouse) and then through the rooms that made up their living area. There is no longer furniture in the house but it still lo...

We spent the first part of the day in Haarlem. They had some markets, including one in the large square right outside of our hotel. There was another smaller one up the street from us as well. I was able to walk around town a little on my own. I checked out some more canals, including the area where the bigger boats come in. It was also a location of the town's historic De Adriaan Windmill. Later, the guys joined me and we looked at the canal and windmill again before going to a museum in Haa...

We saw Neil off to Amsterdam for his flight back to St. Louis before heading into Amsterdam for a last day of sightseeing (after taking out some time to do some laundry). While waiting on the laundry, I saw outside and listened to the church bells call everyone to church...whole families arriving on bikes. It was kind of cool. We had previously tried to go to the Amstelkring Museum but missed the right times so we made sure we were today when it was open. After waiting on a wedding to finish ...