Thursday 10 May 2012

Tuesday April 10th, 2012 – Amsterdam and Keukenhof Gardens


            On Sunday April 8th (Easter!) Mike and I took the train from Berlin to Amsterdam.  We arrived in Amsterdam in the evening and only had time to walk around the old town and check out the Red Light District.  I’ve gotta say, I was very surprised with the Red Light District.  Not because of the prostitutes it’s known for, but how it was such a tourist attraction!  The streets were crowded with people of all ages checking the area out.  There were single people, and couples from their 20’s up to their 80’s walking along the streets.  It was definitely a different experience.  The next day Mike and I got up early to go to the Van Gogh Museum – good thing we did because the line up was HUGE by the time we left the museum in the late morning.  Next we went in many cheese and souvenir shops.  We discovered that you could go from cheese shop to cheese shop trying all the free samples so that it was basically lunch!  We walked through the flower markets and basically just around the city all day.  That evening we went to a pub and got a drink or two.
            The next day we went to Keukenhof Gardens.  The gardens were BEAUTIFUL with millions of tulips and flowers.  There was also a windmill in the park as well.  After exploring the whole park we walked to some nearby farmers fields full of flowers and took pictures.  The fields of flowers just kept going on and on.  Afterwards we went back to Amsterdam looking for more cheese shops – the Gouda cheese from Amsterdam is my favourite cheese now.  It was very sunny that day making it very nice to walk along the canal belt.  We checked out the city hall area and walked around the old town at night.