Amsterdam-Haarlem 8/15-8-18

Dude, did Amsterdam and honestly, it's not really my type of town.  Think of a dirty vegas with humidity and everything that is underground in Vegas is above ground here.  Nonetheless got a good beach day in.

Here's Amsterdam in a Nutshell. This is the main street named Damrak heading right out of the train station.  Canals fanning to the left and behind me, smoke-filled cafes on the left and the red-light district on the right.  Imagine Fisherman's wharf where instead of I love SF sweatshirts in the windows, there are cosmetically altered bikini clad women.  It's a tourist mecca.  Right next door to the sex shops are pizza, donuts and a church if you feel hungry or guilty.

This kind of sums up Amsterdam. Need I say more?

The canals do lend a nice ambiance to the city, notice the houseboats that are true homes.

I shouldn´t be so harsh.  There were a few things of interest.  This is Museumplaz where there are a couple of nice museums. A great Velasquez is behind me in the Rijksmuseum, and the phenomenal Van Gogh museum is the round building to the right.  Velasquez from Spain and Van Gough from Holland are now my two favorites.

I had to get out of town one day so I took the 15 minute train ride to Zandvoort beach. This is the UNCROWDED beach, they say the Hague beach is way more crowded.  I rented a chair for 5 euros, slept and read. And for those of you who are curios, yes I did go topless.

The Anne Frank house was a very thought provoking visit.  Anne, her family and another family lived here in hiding above a factorz for 2.5 years.  Imagine not being able to talk loudly, walk on the floor, go to the bathroom for the entire day and then never being able to go outside for over two zears.  Sadly, her family was discovered in the year before the war ended and Anne died in a concentration camp from a broken heart after her sister died.  If she lasted a month longer, she would have been liberated. Her father was the only survivor of the two families.

In my never ending facination with toilets, here is Haarlem's version of a porta-potty.  You can do the math.

Amsterdam hotels are expensive so I stayed in the normally quiet town of Haarlem. Lepow might like it because close by was the once-in-a-decade Floriade which is like the Mega convention for horticulturists. Well it turns out that my hotel was on top of a bar and the city was hosting this huge jazz fest.  Funny but the beats helped me sleep and other than the heat, I slept pretty well. I wish I had some beads.