Amsterdam, Day 2: Museums

We didn't really get the early start that we were hoping for and we managed to leave the hotel at around 10am or so. We decided to start using the tram which worked out quite well despite the closest stop being 15 minutes away from our hotel. Our first destination was The Rijksmuseum, which turned out being one of the definite highlights of the whole trip. More a gallery than a museum, it housed a whole bunch of works by Rembrandt his contemporaries along with various artifacts and pieces from The Netherlands' golden age. I'm struggling to describe exactly why I liked The Rijksmuseum, but I'm not sure I ever became bored in that building. I managed to spend a lot of digital film there - check my Flickr.

A brief interlude in a diamond factory (or interactive shop as I like to describe it) preceded our visit to The Van Gogh Museum. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take piccies here, but amongst the varying paintings stood his most famous. Seeing his range and career was stunning in theory, but I couldn't help but feel a bit underwhelmed on leaving.

We took the boat to our final destination of the day, namely Anne Frank's House. This was the warehouse (and secret annexe) in which she spent some of the final years of her life writing her now famous diaries. I won't say I was strongly moved, but it was strange breathing the same air that she did.

We only managed these three sites since each one was pretty busy (Anne Frank took us an hour to queue up for). Dinner was a falafel from one of the few kebab shops displaying halal signs. The rest of the evening was washed out, so we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel.