Getting out of bed was hard this morning due to how luxurious the bed was, but we needed to drag ourselves up as there was plenty of Amsterdam to see in the short time we are here. We walked around the canals a bit more and went to a couple of local street markets (Waterlooplein market and Albert Cuyp market). A few bargains were available, but nothing like an Asian street market. We walked through the red light district in the daytime (hey, its hard to avoid as its right in the centre) which didn’t quite have the same buzz about it, but the girls were still in the windows, a lot looking very bored or talking on cell phones.
We also went to an area which I think translates to English as Newmarket, which is an area frequented by young people with lots of bars and restaurants with outdoor seating area. The day was very warm, so this area was quite busy.
We went to a restaurant called Coco’s Outback, an Australian restaurant nearby our hotel whose slogan is “Lousy Food and Warm Beer”. We had lunch watching State of Origin II (Queensland won series, yay!) - I had a crocodile burger and we both had the national dish of the Netherlands, fries with mayonnaise.
Now what would Amsterdam be without its museums, but all the art museums that are here don’t really interest us, so we decided to go to the torture museum. Mildly disturbing, but must make people glad that they live in this modern world.
Dinner was KFC (even though I’ve failed I still got to try it), which I didn’t even feel bad about because the food in Europe is so plain (Missing Asia and looking forward to Mexico - MMmm fajitas). Also the cost of food here is ridiculously high.
We then took a canal cruise, which took us round the canals of Amsterdam with an (English!) commentary explaining the history and various features we saw. One of the more interesting things that they pointed out was that when the houses were constructed they were taxed on their width, which is why all the houses are tall and thin. This made the staircases in them very steep and narrow, which necessitated that each house have a hook coming out of its roof, which is used when people move house to pull the furnishing up and through a window.
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