Amsterdam!

My mom, dad and I eventually flew to Amsterdam after a few delayed and cancelled flights. After taking two flights, a train ride, and a taxi ride, we arrived at our hotel (Hotel prinsenhof) on one of the canals in Amsterdam on Monday (all of the traveling took up most of Monday). Amsterdam was made so that there are various canals shaped like "U"s parallel to each other so almost every block you see a canal.

Yesterday we picked up my sister at the Central Station and we walked around Amsterdam for a little bit. After a nap and dinner we all went to the Anne Frank house. It was neat to see, but all of the rooms were empty (at the request of Otto Frank).  There were many pictures of what the house would have realisticly looked like, though. I really enjoyed it, but it seemed a little lighthearted. We all somehow felt as if we hadn't experienced anything sad... I tried to tip toe up the stairs without making any noise - I couldn't do it, even with new staircases.

Today we woke up and had our daily hotel breakfast of cheese, bread, jams, soft boiled eggs, meats, coffee, and real hot chocolate. We then took the tram to the Rijksmuseum - beautiful architecture. It is currently being renovated and most of the museum will be open in 2013, so we only saw a bit of it. But the bit that we did see was great - a lot of Rembrandt, Delft china, Frans Hals,  etc. We then got lunch at a pancake house. The pancakes here are a lot thinner than an American pancake, but thicker than a crepe. It was really good and huge! After lunch we went to the Van Gogh museum. It was great! Most of the art was Vincent art, but some of the art was by artists that Van Gogh admired and mimicked. All of the famous works were there - potato eaters, sunflowers, almond blossoms, wheat field with crows... It was really neat but there were a lot of annoying Irish school groups there that were getting really close to the artwork. I only yelled at one group of kids...

We just got back from dinner and the tram ride back to prinsengracht. Tomorrow we will be going to the main cathedral, Oude Kerk. We will also be going on a canal ride and possibly the original Heineken Brewery. On Friday we will be going to Keukenhoff and maybe Haarlem.

I will post some pictures once I get to London. Its kind of difficult to do anything fancy right now... I hope school is going okay for everyone! I'll write more soon.