Saturday morning, Gina and I woke up really early to catch the metro to get on a bus to Amsterdam for the day. Luckily both our alarms worked, and we made it on the bus and even got seats next to each other on the top floor. It was about a 3.5 hour trip, and very beautiful. It was really interesting to see the Netherlands' countryside. There are canals EVERYWHERE. Canals ran along the entire highway, were all over farms, through the forest, even into peoples' backyards- as in every house had a canal that went up to it. It was so interesting. The land is very thin too, we could see trees toppled over along with the paper thin land they had their tiny roots in. We saw a ton of canals used for cargo too. I've seen a few in France and Belgium, but they really use them a lot in the Netherlands. And the closer we got to the city, the more and more bikes we saw. I was loving it already.
When we made it into town, we went to a tourist center where we bought tickets for various museums and tours for the day. Gina and I got a canal tour and a Heineken tour. We went to Starbucks to eat something quick and charge our phones, then we headed out to the canal tour, stopping to get fries on the way :) We sat next to an elderly couple from Portugal on the boat, and they spoke English but also French. It was really nice to be able to talk to strangers and have a casual conversation but also having a chance to practice some French in a foreign land.
The tour was really beautiful- I did not realize how important canals were to the Dutch! It was a really cool way to see the city, and we even passed by Anne Frank's house. Unfortunately tickets were sold out for the day, but it was cool to see and I didn't know that Amsterdam was a main hub for refugees during the Holocaust.
When the tour ended, we headed out for the Heineken museum, which ended up being on the other side of the city. But we made it, and got to skip the line and go right in because we bought our ticket ahead of time and it was also cheaper so that rocked. The first half was pretty dull- we thought they were just herding people through to make a quick buck. But it ends up that we learned a lot, and we got to taste barley and water- the first step in beer making- then see the horses, experience what it was like to be beer, then we got to taste... a lot. Definitely worth the 14 euros. There was even a rooftop bar with a view of the city which was pretty cool. We were living the high life (not actually- I promise no drugs were involved on this trip, or any for that matter).
After the museum it was definitely time for lunch so we grabbed some bacon burgers at a place nearby and drank some more beer, definitely a good choice. Then we walked back into the main part of the city and bought some souvenirs, then went over to the red light district. It was not as insane as I thought it would be, but granted the sun was just setting. Still no moral paradise though. Then we went over and bought some more souvenirs (Amsterdam really got our money), and headed out to the bus. It was a half hour late and Amsterdam is not a warm city, so we were very happy to be on that bus and I think I slept a solid three hours. We hit traffic though right when we got to Lille, so that set us back about an hour. We finally made it home though and were very ready for bed. Overall a good day, and a really cool and interesting city.