Amstel
Trip Start
Jun 09, 2007
1
23
27
Trip End
Jul 17, 2007
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Friday, July 6, 2007
Left Germany bright and early as usual, and made our way to the Netherlands and Amsterdam, our tour guide's hunting ground, so to speak. We got to Amsterdam at about midday and went to a diamond place. Kind of interesting. Ridiculously expensive of course. How can one little piece of rock be worth more than the amount of food it would take to feed a small african village for months?? Learnt all about buying a diamond and the diamond scale - angus & cootes, watch out - dare you to try to pull a fast one on me now!
Had a lunch with Ray and the grandsons of 'poffeges' - not the right spelling, I know. It's like pikelets. Shared a plate of the strawberry variety.They were beautiful. After lunch, a canal cruise, very nice. Lots of house boats, which was interesting. Also saw a huge ex-retirement village, which also caught my attention of course. Lots of regulations regarding painting houses on the canal and all that - they are really strict in keeping houses their traditional colour. And it does look good.
After the canal cruise, we went to the Anne Frank House. Wow. What a museum. One of the best ones I've been to and definitly one of my highlights for this trip. Not much i can say about it other than it was well worth going to.
After tea, the olds went home and (most of) the youngs stayed out to see the delights of Amsterdam at night. Course, my highlight was seeing a plaque thing for a Salvation Army officer right in the middle of the red light district! The army wasn't all that far from it, quite strategically placed. What a place though, amsterdam at night...a bit of a world of its own! It was quite an eventful evening.
