AFA - March 2008 #12 Amsterdam (last day)

Amsterdam was interesting, probably the lesser highlight of this adventure. There was a great deal of reference to the relaxed drug culture and red light district. If you went in a tourist shop, you were inevitably exposed to T-shirts and hats with marajuana symbols, and nudity and / or sex gadgets. So, after learning that lesson we were more careful.
Along with being relaxed about morals, Amsterdam has a similar opinion on cleanliness. We were in one of the major tourist areas in town in a KFC (I know, I know, US food????? - the kids would starve if we didn't hit fast food occasionally) when a mouse ran across the floor by our table. No one seemed shocked but us.
But, Amsterdam has some wonderful museums. (that don't allow pictures) The first day we went to the Anne Frank museum which is actually in the house where they hid. Very moving, and amazing that eight people lived in such a cramped area. They also have a Van Gogh (pronounced van-gock if you are cool --- we aren't) museum that was really very good, the largest collection of his work in the world. I'm not a big fan of his, he was such a sad character. But they also have one called the Rijksmuseum museum (pronounced mew-SEE-um) that is incredible. It has the largest collection of Dutch masters like Rembrandt in the world, and it is fantastic. I would recommend that museum to everyone, if they moved it to another town.
Amsterdam is called the 'Venice of the North' but actually has more canals than does Venice. The pictures you see are all from a tour boat, and as you can probably see, it was raining.
In one picture you can see the hook hanging from the top of the house. It is for moving. The stairs are so tight in the houses that everything goes up via rope to a large door and moved into place from there.
There are also many house boats on the canals, some legit, some not so legit. They also have problems with cars going into the canals. They have, on average, two cars a week that go into canals either by reckless driving, or frequently by making a mistake parking. Much of the parking is right beside the canals.