Holland

Day 6 - Tuesday, May 18
Less than a week into our vacation, we entered a city like no other - Amsterdam.  Replete with swanky porn stores and funny smelling coffee shops our hotel was sandwiched between red lights and live sex shows.  The Globe hotel, despite its location, was fairly nice.  We had a room of six beds and met J.P. (Juan Pablo) from Chile.  Our other roommate, however, we called "Stinky Boy."  His toxic stench was almost unbearable...thank goodness he was sleeping next to Ali and not me.
 

Day 7 Since Bruges was so nice we decided to take a day trip to Edam (pronounced as if the E were a long A).  This was one of the neatest small towns we visited.  Only 20 minutes away, this peaceful town had flowered gardens in front of every house, people on bikes and walking their dogs, wooden shoes hung from fences, and a windmill.  What more could you ask for?  This picture is of one of the houses in Edam.  We bought bread from a local bread store, chocolate from a chocolate shop, and fruit from a local fruit store and ate lunch by the canals on yet another sunny day in Europe.  We must have had the luckiest vacation ever - not a single day were we rained out.

 

Day 8 When gas costs four dollars per gallon, you want a car that gets good mileage, like this one.  Although it looks more like a toy than an automobile, small cars like this were fairly common.  On our last day we went to the Anne Frank House and ate at an Indonesian restaurant.  Indonesia was once a Dutch colony and thus several Indonesian restaurants could be found.  We enjoyed a walk-free last day in Amsterdam when we discovered that nobody checked for tickets on the public transportation system.