Holland part 2

This day we woke up and it was raining. We didn't do too much because, well, Amsterdam is a very 'outside' kinda place. We found and internet cafe and did a whole lot of internetting to find out what was in Amsterdam to do. Ended up at the Van Gogh museum looking at a million Van Gogh paintings. After that, if I ever see another Van Gogh painting again I'll die a happy man! Haha. So now on the one holiday, I've seen 2/5 of the 'sunflower' paintings thanks to London and Amsterdam. We had a snooze in the afternoon because all the days of being out doing things had taken its toll, and after having done some dinner we went back to the pub we went to the night previous for tasty cider, free internet and the Liverpool vs Luton football match.

The net day after packing up our bags and holding our noses while eating what was meant to resemble breakfast, we caught the train to Moniques house, a friend of Esther's who she met in Manchester. On the way there I saw 9 windmills out of the train window and lots of dykes, so that pleased me. With Monique we got to ride to the shops (EVERYONE here owns a bike), got to post things home (family, watch your mailbox) and also got to go the supermarket where because Monique is Dutch, she can read and speak Dutch, so I asked her what EVERYTHING was and meant and why it was like that. Esther said I was like a 5yr old, but I didn't care because we finally had someone who could read all the signs!
More of Esther's Dutch friends, Maarten and Linda showed up. We had dinner, watched football, laughed at funny videos, had webcam chats with Kevin (more about him when we get to NY) and then went out to a "Beer Cafe". At this cafe, you sit down and you get this big leather book that has all their beers in it. Just like at a normal cafe, you order the beers (which have a photo and description of each beer in the menu) from the waiter who rings them to you at the table in glasses specially made for the beer you're drinking. It was brilliant. I got to try a few nice Belgian beers and a Dutch one too. These guys have tasty beer down pat. Australia, you lose, seriously.
Maarten and Linda both had to go home, so we said goodbye to them and Esther and I slept on Moniques floor (we had sleeping bags and things, no we were not drunk!)

Photos of Amsterdam and travels:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26306&l=7209f&id=544876388

Monique had a brilliant idea for what to do the next day, so we went for it. We caught the train to Den Haag and went to this place called 'Modurodam'. Basically its Coccington Green in Canberra gone mental. It was scenes and buildings from across The Netherlands all built in miniature. The thing is that while the models were small, there were hundreds of them! The arena they were in was massive. They even had a model railway running right the way through and around the place to show off the typical Dutch trains. It was the biggest model railway of its size I've seen. Walking round there we got to see heaps of cool things from around Holland and have stacks of fun pretending to be giants smashing up the place.
Monique had to leave, so we said goodbye to her too. Alone again, Esther and I caught the tram to Den Haag's famous Pier. There we took our first look at the English Channel and ate Poffertjies and Pancakes. What was funny was that on the way there we saw a whole bunch of things that we'd seen as models in Modurodam, so that was very cool.
Slept for a few hours then went to this thing where they get movies and show them on the roof of this massive dome. We saw one about The Alps in Switzerland. It was great for many reasons: It felt like you were flying through the mountains, they backing music between the people talking was Queen ("can't stop me now" being played during mountaineers exercising was amazingly funny) and that the english translation (remember, everything here is in Dutch) that we had to listen to through plug in headphones was narrated by Michael Gambon who they named a corner on the Top Gear track after.
On the way back to the Hostel, we walked past a 'Snack Bar'. These places are pretty much Dutch kebab shops. We'd been told by Monique, Linda and Maarten that we HAD to try some things from one of these shops, so I did. IT WAS SO TASTY oh my it was good. I got this sausage thing that was covered in tomato and curry and onion (a little like the Bratwurst I had in Germany) and that was brilliant. The other thing I had was a chicken kebab, but with PIZZA BREAD! It was the usual filling of chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion and garlic sauce, but the bread had a layer of pizza sauce, meat and cheese already cooked onto it. Amazing. Someone somewhere MUST sell it, I know they must. Oh yum.
I really liked Den Haag. All the people were nice and the place just looked really nice. Like Amsterdam it had lots of canals and lots of old buildings to look at. It was great.

Photos of Den Haag:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26311&l=0d6f2&id=544876388

Next place we went to was Rotterdam. Rotterdam, apart from being the site of a Jackie Chan movie I liked, has really weird Architecture (or Arch-hi-tetch-her as the woman in the tourist information pronounced it). The Germans bombed the pace flat during the second world war, so they has an entire new city to build. There are very few old buildings, one of which we saw today, everything else is brand spanking new with Architects going mental with designs. I'm not so keen on most of them, but Esther seemed to dig them.
Oh yeah, I think I lost the finger gloves I made out of the arms of a Thermal shirt I cut up to make a thermal T-shirt. I sure hope I haven't because I love those gloves.
We hired bikes! In Holland, everyone rides a bike, so they have dedicated bike lanes on all the roads. Riding around was thus easy! Well, not for Esther at first as the last time she'd ridden a bike was 10yrs ago. After getting the going forwards bit sorted, we quickly realised that she couldn't turn. This was evident after the first corner where Esther had run straight into the pole in front of her. She didn't fall off or hurt herself or anything, but it gave her a bit of a fright. Half way around the city and after riding through a few parks away from traffic she quickly got her confidence back up and things were fine from there on. We got to ride around most of the city and saw many weird buildings and things. I found it especially fun because I hadn't ridden a bike in so long and that because Holland is so flat, it meant NO hills to ride up and down.
We caught the tram across town after our biking trip, went to a place like Reverse Garbage back in Sydney called 'Scrap', then hung out at the hostel eating dinner and patting the hostel dog. Good times had by all :)

Photos of Rotterdam:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26312&l=111b7&id=544876388