Day 3 - Amsterdam

Well, another day gone by, and the last one here in Amsterdam. The days have actually passed pretty quick. We stay quite busy, lots of walking and looking around, I kinda feel like a missionary again in that sense. We got up pretty early today... OK, not really. It was only 9:20am. Yeah. We WERE going to get up earlier, but we were sort of tired. We woke up to Ashley in our faces, waking us up, I felt like such a dork. We got ready and made our way to the Anne Frank Museum. Ashley felt the need to take us the long way, the REALLY long way. As in, we walked an extra mile to get there and it took 45 minutes, if not longer. It was only 15 minutes away in the first place... GRRRRR! But we forgave her and had a great time. It was the actual place that Anne Frank hid when the Nazis were after the Jews. It was here and a couple of others that hid there for I think 2 years until they were finally found out. It was interesting to be in the same confines as Anne herself and the others. We were in the tiny rooms they hid in and saw some of the decorations the Anne had made on the wall to spruce things up during their stay. I’m very glad I went, it gave me a new respect for her and her journal entries.

After Anne Frank, Ashley took off to the flower garden in Keukenhof, she stayed for a long time, longer than she anticipated she loved it so much. In the meantime, Jackie and I were out getting gifts for my family, it was so hard. I hate shopping for gifts for my family, it’s so dang hard. But, luckily, I got something for everybody but dad. But he’s OK, I’m sure he’d just want me to get something for the rest of the family. Jackie tagged along and was a good sport while I did the shopping. After we got done sending that stuff off, 19 Euros later (just to send), we found out the all of Amsterdam isn’t as ghetto as where we have been staying. It’s actually quite beautiful and we found that out by going south on a random tram. We have decided that we’ll give Amsterdam a second chance in the future.

We met back up with Ashley and hung out in the Hostel bar for about 2 hours. We just talked about Europe and Africa and our plans once we get there. It was nice to just sit for while, we have been up and on the run since we got here and my shoulders are getting a bit tired from taking my backpack around with my camera and four lenses. But that’s the price one must pay in order to get awesome pictures, which I did. After we chatted, we made our way to Vondle Park, on the southwest part of town. We discovered that it would have been very beautiful had we been there in the day, unfortunate that we weren’t. Ian met up with us and took us to a bar called something like Blue Tea House, or something along those lines. He offered us drink, of course we told him Coke Light (ashley and I), but Jackie got a nice steaming cup of hot chocolate, it was freezing outside. We sat around and talked for a while and finally got up and made our way home. We had to stop by Ians to get Ashley’s luggage. We then caught the #1 tram and took it to Central where we got off and walked home. It was kind of a big ordeal, but we were happy to help. I may have just been very tired. And here I am, typing at 1.:46 in the morning; what can I say, I’m a night owl.

That was our day, our last day. We get up tomorrow at 7:15am, check-out of the hostel at 8:00am, and have a flight to catch at 11:10am. It’s another long 8 hour flight, but this time I’ll be listening to music and talking with Jackie and Ashley, as long as they don’t fall asleep that is. Until tomorrow.