Day nine of our honeymoon dawned in Hamsterdam (Scott's name for Amsteram). I love how walkable and small it really is. I love how full of art, history and life the city is. And I especially love how beautiful Amsterdam is.
Scott is a huge art fanatic so our first stop in Amsterdam was the Rijksmuseum which has quite a few Remembrant pieces. Scott's favorite artist is Remembrant and I knew that we'd be remiss to miss those pieces.
The Rijksmuseum also features quite a few Vermeer paintings and he happens to be my favorite artist. Let's just say that both Scott and I were quite happy to be in the Rijksmuseum. It's a smaller museum but full of such great artwork. You leave refreshed instead of exhausted which was a different feeling than the Louvre. When you leave the Louvre, you feel a bit like you've survived a war.
After the Rijksmuseum, we headed over to the Van Gogh Museum which is only about 200 yards away. We spent a very long time in the Van Gogh Museum. Scott loves Van Gogh and how could I deny his time in there even though honestly I could care less about Van Gogh's art. I think his back story is much more interesting.
After Van Gogh, I was museumed out so we headed over to Dam Square and did a bit of window shopping.
That night before heading back to the apartment, we found the most awesome of awesome grocery stores. I love grocery shopping so when we spotted this store, I was in love! It was called Marqt and was so swanky.
Unfortunately most of the products were only in Dutch so I guess when I bought some Karnemelk, hoping it was milk. We discovered otherwise the next morning when we went to enjoy our coffee with Karnemelk, otherwise known as buttermilk. Let me tell you, coffee and buttermilk is GROSS!
The next morning, we headed over to Rembrant's house. Again, Scott swooned. I think he loved Amsterdam due to all the Rembrant items.
The house was lovely and quite the nice tour. I enjoyed seeing Rembrant's sketchings.
Once done there, we headed toward my favorite place, The Anne Frank Huis. We did stop at the Katten Kabinet to enjoy all the cat art and make jokes about being crazy old cat ladies.
The line was long at the Anne Frank Huis but I'm in love with Anne Frank and all that she stood for. Touring the house she lived in during the war is heartbreaking and so wonderful at the same time. I do wish the crowds weren't so thick. I had to hold myself back from buying a special museum copy of her diary which I now regret. I wasn't sure that I had the room in my suitcase though.
After the Frank Huis, we went to the lovely and tasty Pancake Bakery. If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, have lunch there. It's perfectly wonderful.
We had a savory pancake and sweet one. You could probably eat there everyday and still not try everything. There are so many choices.
After filling our bellies with pancakes, we headed out to the Jordaan area before walking back to our apartment for the evening.
On our final day in Amsterdam, I took Scott out to the Red Light District.
We found a condom shop selling rooster condoms which made us laugh. The Red Light District was unimpressive to Scott and it is too me. It's not the nicest part of the city as you can imagine but one does need to visit if they've not been before.
After that, we walked to the Dutch Resistance Museum where we read about the Dutch Resistance to the Nazi's during WWII. Even though they were eventually occupied, the Dutch were really against the war.
After enjoying lunch, we discussed what our options were for the rest of the day. I said that we could just go back to the apartment and lounge for the rest of the day. Scott jumped at that opportunity. It felt great to rest up before our 22 hour trek home the next day.
We had a wonderful time in Europe and a very memorable honeymoon. We can't wait to go again but have decided not to be as busy next time.
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