When does Spring get here?

Usually I would say that traveling to Europe is easier than traveling home. I usually don't suffer too many extreme jet lag symptoms, but this time round I've been a mess. I think the other times I've had less time to do what I want and more of a strict schedule to abide by. This means that I had to be up and going without exception. Not this time. This time I am my own schedule and I am clearly not doing a very good job of de-jet-lagging myself. Basically this means I am tired during the day, I don't sleep well at night, and when I wake up I'm exhausted. I'm sure it won't last much longer.

This morning I made my way out of the hotel and down to the Anne Frank House. This is the actual location where Anne Frank was in hiding during WWII and where she wrote her diary. I felt slightly guilty going as I had not read her diary. I have a thing against war books, no matter I always find them so depressing. That said I think I want to try and pick up this book when I get home. The house is really interesting and it was very cool to see where she actually stayed, in such a small space with 8 other individuals. You can still see pictures she pasted onto the walls to decorate her room, they also have her actual diary and many other artifacts in and around the house. I love that the house is still there, exactly as it was. So often it is easy to separate war stories from reality because not only are they so awful it seems like such a long time ago in such a far away place. Being in the hiding space made it all so real. Great experience.

After the tour part of the house I had lunch in the cafe at the museum. They have lovely views of the canals. This isn't really hard, as long as there are windows facing the canals you have amazing views. The streets are always so busy with people biking around and boats on the canal.

I caught the tram towards the Van Gogh Museum in the hopes of taking in some world renowned art. Along the way I thought I was considerably closer to where I was going than I was so I ended up walking quite a while to get to where I was going. No complaints really. The weather, though cool was not unbearable. The area with the Van Gogh Museum is entitled the Museum Quarter as there are quite a few large museums in a small area. Also outside the museum are the I Amsterdam letters - you might be familiar with this, it is a popular photo op for tourists. It is at the end of a long field, unfortunately for me they have placed a skating rink right in front of the letters making it very difficult to get a proper picture of the letters in their entirety. Regardless I snapped a few pics and headed to the museum.

My favorite Van Gogh is by far Starry Night which I hoped to take a peak at. However, upon walking through the entire museum and then looking it up online I have discovered that it makes it permanent home in New York's Museum of Modern Art. In retrospect this isn't surprising as it is world famous and New York likely provides larger art audiences. The museum was quite good. They had a lovely and wide variety of his works as well as a number of works by other artists he drew influence from - such as Claude Monet! I love Monet's paintings. A few familiar paintings you might recognize that were present were Sunflowers by Van Gogh and Monet's Japanese Bridge. I likely should have taken more time to peruse but it was busy and I was tired.

Directly across the street is the House of Bols. Bols is a liquor company here in Amsterdam and they like their cocktails and their fancy bar-tending. It was a short self guided tour whereby you taste things and smell things and learn about other things related to the distilling process...? Clearly I didn't learn that much. Ha. But at the end they will make you whatever kind of cocktail you want then provide you with two shot glasses of liquor to sample. Generally it was a favourable experience but it could easily be skipped with little regret.

I had some time to kill between then and when I was going to be a part of a tour in the Red Light District so I decided to try and pick up a few things I need so I did a little more shopping before stopping into a cafe for a hot drink in an attempt to warm up. The wind was picking up and it was getting cold!

Just before 5pm I made my way to the RLD for my tour which was organized by the Prostitute Information Centre - run by a former prostitute. I thought the RLD would be much seedier, especially the way people wrote about it online but it is actually quite respectable.. or at least the area doesn't feel dangerous, not at all. In fact the houses in the RLD are the most expensive, some worth more than $1million or maybe €1million, I'm not really sure. There are many pubs, restaurants, and houses. In fact I believe that a large number of families live in the area. You see everyone walking around, families, young people, older people. It is definitely an area I would have explored more had it not been so bloody cold. As an aside, the tour guide gave the French people in my group a hard time for not learning English sooner - ha, she told them to get with the times. It was great.

At the end of the 1hour-ish tour I was freezing so I hoped that stopping for a quick bite would warm my popsicle toes. I stopped at a McDonalds - which is not somewhere I usually eat but when you are traveling it almost seems easy, and somewhat exciting to see what the local McDonald's trend is. Ha, seems odd but its true. I think I've eaten at McDonalds in most countries I've visited. Anyways the store was cold and the Big Mac was kind of gross and the Coke Light (which I don't think I will get used to) just doesn't taste the same as Diet Coke. Fail Coke, major Fail.

At this point I was still freezing and went to catch my bus back to the hotel. I was quite exhausted. Being cold and walking around all day tires a girl out.

I think I've decided why it seems so much colder. Although it is quite cold when I am at home if it is cold like this I don't generally spend my time walking around in that cold weather for hours at a time. Like many other European cities their shopping streets or places to walk around have open stores onto the streets, so they don't have doors - it is like a mall but onto the street. In this way you never really warm up, you just get cold and stay cold. I suggest that they invest in doors, couldn't hurt.

I made it to the hotel and hopped in the shower to have the hottest shower I could. It took me forever to warm up and I don't really think I ever got really warm.

It is supposed to be sunny tomorrow which should help because today had a kind of mist hanging out all day, kind of like a light fog that didn't want to lift.

Until tomorrow.

Today I learned:

• It is the dream of most Amsterdamians (?) to own a home on the canal
• Every property on the canal is a national monument and is protected - so Amsterdam will stay looking like Amsterdam for a very long time