Amsterdam... a great place to visit....

Living where we do rocks! There are so many places to go with in a few hour commute. My sister in law is visiting us still, and I thought that it would be a great experience for her to see a large European city, and where better then to Amsterdam?! W. and I didn't mind touring the city again either.

From our place in Germany, it is a short commute to Holland. From there we took a high speed train through the farm fields to the city of sin and canals. The train ride was only two hours, and with gas being $9/ gal we thought it the less expensive way to go. Plus the Dutch are bilingual, and almost everyone in the Netherlands speaks English.

Arriving at the Central station in Amsterdam we were surrounded by crowds of tourists, and paths of canals. Central station in Amsterdam is by far one of the nicer train stations that I've been to. From there it is a short walk to anywhere you want to go in the city. There is an inter city train station and water taxi depot with in feet of the main train station. Being the adventurous girls that we are, we decided to walk.



Canals are everywhere! And being a large city, there is limited housing space. So... living on the water is the place to be for some people. House boats adorn the larger canals, while there are row boats gliding down the smaller ones.





No trip to Amsterdam can be complete with out a trip through the Red Light District. Of course at 10 in the morning, there's really not much to see, but there's always window shopping! Check out the latest spring fashions:














And with any big city, you are going to get wildlife. W. had a wonderful time feeding the pigeons gold fish crackers while SIL and I did some souvenir shopping. She had such a nice time feeding the birds that she wore her self out, and needed to try out the swinging chairs that were on display. I think that she made such a good model that people from the street who had stopped to admire her actually went into the store to try out the chairs for them selves!






In all, Amsterdam is a great place to visit. Though I am sure that I would not like to live there permanently. It is big and crowded and nothing like the simple life we've become accustom to. But it's good to have perspective, and Amsterdam is a great place to go to gain some.