Wandering

Today we went exploring though the streets of Amsterdam! Our apartment is a little less than 2 miles from Central Station so we decided to walk there and check out little shops and the canals along the way...

The little car is so cutie!

We walked past a lot of nautical themed attractions... 

Het Scheepvaartmuseum, or the National Maritime Museum is just around the corner from us! The museum is dedicated to maritime history and contains many artifacts associated with shipping and sailing. The collection contains paintings, scale models, weapons and world maps

We found Nemo! It is a Science Museum that has five floors of hands-on science exhibitions that was built in 1923.

There's so much to do around Central Station! Right now Amsterdam is participating in their annual Festival of Light! The city looks beautiful all lit up. We're hoping to take a canal cruise tomorrow to take a better look. We went tonight and missed the last tour by 3 minutes!

One thing so far that I've found frustrating is the above ground trolley system.  Bikes are everywhere and they can be very aggressive if you get in their way. There's also cars everywhere too so throw trolleys into the mix and I feel like I have to look every which way before I even take a step! The one problem between Connor and me is that the Bostonian in me comes out when crossing the street and you have to be out of your mind if you think I'm going to wait for a walk signal! I think Connor is convinced I'm going to have us deported for jaywalking! I'm going to have to work on that...

 

I don't know if the picture is clear enough, but the lights at the top of the building say "Jesus loves you."  We thought this was strange because the Netherlands is not really known for being religious, particularly as a quarter of the population claim to be Atheist. So naturally we found this to be a pleasant surprise, especially because it was next to a church!

Having a grocery store just around the corner from us makes eating in a lot easier! We're just having a a little trouble because all of the labels are in Dutch! We really lucked out having so much so close to us!

Connor found a familiar name when picking out wine!

(It's called Norton if you can't tell!)