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Amsterdam
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Early morning Easyjet flight = touchdown in Amsterdam and arrival in the city centre about 10.30 am, completely knackered but ready to hit the streets! I purchased a map at the airport which came in extremely handy as I quickly realized that every street looks virtually the same, all of them conspiring to get me lost, and usually succeeding.
First stop then was the main square, featuring the palace, war memorial, Madame Tussauds, and a large number of pigeons to make me feel at home. It was a tad nippy at this point so I took a walk across town to the Rembrantsplein, and Rembrants house, and then to Waterlooplein to take a sneak peek at the markets, admiring many fancy buildings along the way...
  
And city views...
  
I then managed to successfully navigate my way (how?) to the Anne Frank House and was pleasantly distracted by a photography exhibition going on in the square next door (erm, near the homo monument...seriously!) encompassing amazing photos of animals and nature from all over the world - I especially love the monkey shots!
 
Anyways, I queued for 20 minutes or so to get in and once inside I found it to hard to place the rooms inside the house to where they are when you look from the outside. It was like a complete maze - no wonder they never found it! I thought it would have been better and more realistic if it had been furnished but it was so busy that that would have been impractical really. There was some really good features and videos inside, especially the interviews with Otto Frank and the neighbours and people who helped them, that lived through the war.
  
Pretty hungry afterwards so I found this *amazing* eatery on the main street... why is food not like that in England?! Mmm, apple cake... And cannabis lollies, natch.
 
Then I hopped along downtown, took a sneaky peak at the Heiniken museum for my dad ;) and made it to the Rijskmuseum and popped inside for a bit. Most of it was closed off for renovation so I didn't spend that much time there... decided to go the torture museum instead! In addition to the disturbing subject matter, it was extremely dark and dingy, as if they were trying to torture you themselves for having the nerve to enter. There were actually some quite amusingly insane items, believe it or not, my personal favourite being "the Flute of Shame", which involved shackling, trapping and compressing the subjects fingers in a flute like implement, and was apparently dished out to "bad musicians". I suppose the ancient equivalent of Simon Cowell, if you know who he is, mother ;)
  
Completely knackered at this point I caught the train back to Schipol Airport for a rendez-vous with my dad on the Panoramic Terrace. I found him perched at the Heiniken Bar with his spotting mates Rene and a Latvian chip shop worker living in Blackpool. Looked more like a drinking holiday than a spotting holiday to me! Anyway, we had dinner at the panoramic restaurant and then went back to our etap hotel, where I was given the bunk bed and my dad got the double - fair?! I think not!
 
There was also time for a quick visit to spotters point - yes it is called that - right by McDonalds if anyones interesting - classic plane spotting vantage point ;)
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