For Day Two of our trip, I had planned to see the Anne Frank house and tour the Heineken Brewery. We started off the morning with a complimentary breakfast at the hotel- salami and Gouda sandwiches. I like both salami and Gouda very much, but I still consider them a lunch food. Once we got to Centraal Station, we set off towards Prinsengracht.
More varieties of houseboats. Some of them look darn cozy!
A 3-seater..... I saw a man with a little boy in the front holder zooming by and the little boy was gripping the handlebars making motorcycle noises. It was pretty cute!
The office building where Anne Frank and her family hid in a secret annex for two years during WWII. We did not get a chance to go inside- the lines were really long, and they were sold out of the online tickets that would allow you to bypass the line. I had read The Diary of a Young Girl a couple weeks before coming to Amsterdam so I would know what it was about!From Prinsengracht, we moved on to The Heineken Experience- a brewery tour (although they no longer use this brewery). Surprisingly, the entire tour was in English- from the signs on the walls to the interactive displays. We walked through the process of how beer is made and even had the opportunity to taste Step 1 - a mixture of hops and water! It tasted like horse feed and the flavor stayed in my mouth for far too long.
At the end of the tour we got to cash in our tokens for 2 beers each! They like to say you get "two free beers" but I'm pretty sure we paid for it in the ticket price. ;)From the brewery we crossed the street and went to a pancake place for lunch. The Dutch love their pannekuchens! You could choose from sweet or salty pancakes- Ted got hot pancakes with ice cream on top (which may have changed his life) and I chose apple & bacon pancakes (not my best decision ever but it wasn't horrible).
What would a pancake lunch be without a steamy, buttery plate of poffertjes to share!?
By the time we finished up lunch and hauled our full bellies up to the train station, we were ready to get out of the city. Our train ran every 28 minutes, but I always had our paperback books in my backpack so we didn't really mind the wait (if anyone is looking for something new to read, pick up The Confession by John Grisham- I give it a thumbs up).We got back to the hotel and had some nap / tv time, and by the time we got around to dinner it was almost 8! We walked down the street towards Hoopfdorf (a suburb of Amsterdam I guess) and it was more what I expected Holland to look like. Just a nice, quiet little town. It was raining so I didn't really get any pictures that show what I mean, but I'll put 'em up anyway.
One thing I noticed was that none of the yards had grass! They all had plants and shrubs and flowers, but the base was rock, and some were just solid rock like you would find on a playground. Interesting!
We grabbed some pizza, walked back to the hotel, chowed down, and called it a good night. :)
Day Three to follow.
all that pancake talk made me whip some up for my breakfast this morning!
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