Sunday June 21 - Monday June 22

Pedometer: 21,172

Amsterdam is very different than London. Bikes are rolling by constantly. We ate eel and potato soup, it tastes like potato and ham soup, very good and the national dish: pea soup. PHENOMINAL. I am going to learn how to make this soup for home, it is so thick almost like a pea stew than soup. Incredible food.

We arrived at the Van Gogh museum immediately as it opened and fast passed everyone with our internet tickets (always buy on line if you can). I saw one of my favorite paintings Wheatfield with Crows in real life. It is so dark and vibrant with the wide brush strokes of the wheatfield and the storm on the horizon and the road in the middle that goes off into the wheatfield. I let my eyes soak in each brush stroke and color as i stood and listened to the story of the possible last painting that Van Gogh made before he shot himself in the chest and died two days after.

We boarded a canal cruise and took it up the canal to the Anne Frank House. What an amazing and awful experience those people went through just for the basic right of life. Her diary is there in the museum. It can move you to tears walking through the house with nothing in it an imagine how many people had to share such a small area, not to just live but to survive one of the worst events of all time. That story just shows how an extremist can harm even the most innocent.

On a lighter note we ate pancakes for lunch, another national food. Remember, Amsterdam not Belgium. We got back on the cruiser and that's when we met the family from Beaumont Texas. They were very nice people, three boys ages 7-12 or there abouts and the youngest named "Walker", but it was a little obvious that he was on his second marriage to the trophy wife.
We got off the cruise and hit the red light district for the first time: Cubbie hole prostitution. Red lights over the door says open for business.

For dinner, we got lost trying to find the restaurant, we finally found a traditional Dutch Restaurant, pea soup again, not as good as the first place but we also had herring. Let me tell you about this staple of Dutch Cuisine: not bad really, I loved it, not fishy at all. Then the eel, salted eel - taste delicious mostly like sushi eel. Cinnamon ice cream for dessert.
Our waitress was a sweetheart. Since Kirsten and I have nothing at all to say to each other anymore, nothing new happens to us individually so we stare at each other a lot of the time. I ordered a beer with dinner as always and so since we didn't talk I peeled te label off the bottle, she took the bottle from me and after dinner brought me the label, how cute was that.