Clogs, Canals and Stroopwafels!

Yesterday I ventured to Amsterdam with Adrienne, Brittany, Jarrod, Julia, and Christy. It is brutally cold out here so we had to really bundle out! It's about a 40 minutes away from Leiden. My impression of Amsterdam is that it is not a very attractive city. I'm glad we are staying in Leiden because it has a much better holiday feel.

The train station itself was a quite attractive building. But a lot of the architecture did nothing for me. Right out of the train station we saw tons of tourist shops, and us being tourist, we naturally had to stop. There were clogs everywhere and I thought this was amazing. They were so bright and shiny. I wanted to buy some wicked bad. I opted for a small finger size pair.

The city is covered with canals....and bikes too. We crossed over three canals to get to the Anne Frank House. I found this really interesting. It was well done. All throughout the house, their were quotes posted from her diary. I learned quite a bit but it made me pretty sad. Whenever I hear about the holocaust it makes me pretty upset. They built a reception area in front of the house and we couldn't seem to get to the back either so we never got to see the actual house. It seemed to be surrounded by newer structures abstructing our view. One of the quotes Anne said her dad was not in a very nice business. He worked with pepper and pectin and she said if you are going to work in the food industry you might as well make candy. Anne must have been awesome.

After that we walked through the red light district which was highly disturbing. I couldn't believe how girls just sit in the window like that. Even though I had heard about it, I was still in such shock actually seeing it.

Soooooooooo then we tried stroopwafels which I was told was a must cause they are known for them here. Basically it is a wafer thin waffle sandwich with caramel goodness inside. They were delightful!

Then we headed home because the cold got the best of us!