The bus in Amsterdam was extremely disappointing. There weren’t many seats and the audio guide told you almost nothing. However, we still used them to travel around the city. Our first stop was the Anne Frank house. Except… The line wound for a couple blocks and was a couple hours long. Skip-the-line tickets have been sold out for three months. Needless to say, we won’t be visiting that museum. Also, toward the end of the day when we were all tired, we realized the Van Gogh was a very long way from anything else and most of the same artists will be at a museum in London. After a quick wander through the Heineken gift shop and many jokes about buying various souvenirs for my dorm room, we got on the bus again and got off at a botanical garden.

That was really where the day turned around. We ordered lunch in very airy, modern cafe in the garden and were served an amazing meal that you can read about in dad’s post (the title of which looks like he slammed his face into the keyboard). We spent a long time there just relaxing and enjoying the peace.

Then we raided the little garden itself. And gardens with my family are an interesting experience. Mom saunters around oohing and awing at all the flowers and proudly pointing out which ones we have in our backyard while dad looks for the strangest looking things to point out to us all. Bug hotels, cactuses with bubble-like flowers at the top…

And then of course there’s me, taking pictures of everything (I’m only at 400 so far) and muttering at the camera for not focusing on the little flowers (curse you autofocus).

I had a lot of fun there. Every kind of artist was around, and even though we didn’t walk past anyone else speaking English, everyone was smiling and kind enough not to walk through my photos. That’s something I’ve noticed a lot around Europe, actually. The bigger your black camera, the more people wait for you to finish. Everyone walks through cell phone pictures, duck under those little rectangle ones, walk around me with my mid-sized black one, and wait patiently beside the big black ones.

But back to the garden. Every corner had someone with a set of watercolors, oil paints, or charcoal pencils. Lots of people had cameras and with the classical music drifting over it all, I could have stayed for a long time. Or at least moved to Amsterdam and bought a membership or something.

After returning to the bikes and noise of the city, we waited for the bus again at an unmarked stop and went to the diamond factory. Lots and lots of sparkly things for very big price tags. We amused ourselves by looking for ones that cost the same as a year of college. You can get quite the pretty double-stranded, diamond studded necklace for a college education. Mom said no.

And then while me and Michael discussed just how an entire SWAT team would fit into the ceiling above the metal detectors of the diamond factory, we crossed the square to a little Delft Blue store (white pottery with blue paint). I enjoyed the free tea there and debated buying clog slippers, but we didn’t end up getting any pottery or slippers. Just some yummy carmel waffle cookie things.

And now we’re back at the houseboat, watching the boats and the blue herons and listening to a CD of the musicians who played in the garden this afternoon. Tomorrow we’re taking the day off, so maybe I’ll sit around and get a couple pictures uploaded. Dad put the wifi box on the roof so maybe it will work better now.

The windmill by the houseboat – we ate dinner behind it the first night.

Goodnight!