We got up not quite as early and started to get ready at a leisurely pace, expecting to catch the Ferry into town. While I was in the shower, Tami realized that the schedule for the Ferry was different on Sundays and that it wouldn't be running for quite awhile. She called down to the front desk and found that a shuttle was leaving in 5 minute or in 45 minutes. So, we rushed really quickly to finish getting ready and made it to the shuttle (which actually took 20 minutes before they were ready to leave).
We walked through downtown and through the canals on the way to Anne Frank's house. Anne Frank's house was really impressive, although there was already a line even though we were early on a Sunday morning. It wasn't too bad though, so we didn't have to wait too long. We then walked around the canals a bit more, taking in the scenery a bit more and seeing things like the Prison Bridge, a cage built into the base of one of the bridges. We then got caught in a hail storm and ended up standing in a doorway for 20 minutes waiting for it to pass. After that, we ended up having lunch at the Pancake Bakery. Tami had a tomato and cheese pancake while I had a ham, cheese, and mushroom pancake. The pancakes are much different from pancakes in the States... they are closer to crepes although not quite as thin. While savory pancakes seemed really weird, they were actually very good.
Statue of Anne Frank
Tami's tomato and cheese pancake
We then walked around a bit more and ended up going to a brown cafe called Cafe Papaeneiland where Tami had a Kriek (cherry) beer and I had a Palm lager. After that, we headed down to Winkel for an apple pie, which is much different than our apple pies. It was good, but no match for an American apple pie :) We then walked off the pie before taking the bus out to Keukenhof.
Keukenhof is about 50 minutes outside of downtown Amsterdam. It is known as the "World's largest flower garden" and is next to the Tulip fields which were very impressive. Just rows and rows of flowers. Keukenhof is only open for about two months out of the year, so we were pretty happy that we were there at the right time. Unfortunately, it had been a cold spring so far, so some of the tulips hadn't bloomed yet. However, there were still plenty that were in bloom. Inside Keukenhof, there was tons of flowers arranged in lots of different garden arrangements. There also was a windmill that you could walk up and see the tulip fields from higher up. We stayed there for 2 1/2 hours and you could easily stay there for longer.
Flower fields
Gardens in Keukenhof
Tami in the flowers
Tami wearing her new wooden clogs
After we got back into town, we figured we would have a snack, so we got frites (french fries) in a cone which is a speciality over there. They were good, but the ones in Bruges were better. We then did a canal boat trip around the city that lasted about an hour. It was pretty nice, but we'd already seen much of the scenery walking around town earlier in the day. After the boat trip was over, it was dark so we walked through the red light district, which was quite interesting. After that, we stopped in at a pub and had Bittenballen which is a snack food you can find all around Amsterdam. It has pieces of meat surrounded by some kind of flour mixture that had consistency of melted cheese, rolled into a ball and fried. You dipped it in mustard and ate it. It's not healthy for you at all, but it was an excellent bar food. By then, it was getting kind of late and we had to wake up at 2:15 in the morning to head back to London, so we headed back to the hotel.
A blurry picture of the streets along the red light district
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