Europe Day 3 Friday, October 15th, 2010

Beautiful church

Beautiful Hotel named after my mom;)

Central Train Station

Bikes falling in the canal, bummer!

Door to Anne Franks Secret Annex.

We were going to do the tour of the brewery, but showed up 30 minutes late. Oh well, we will go tomorrow.

Troy in our cover canal bus. Refuge from the rain we had been walking in all day.

Me, in our covered canal bus after being in the rain all day. It was warm too. Praise God!

As we rode in the canal bus the lights came on the bridges. It was so cool. Would have been more romantic if we weren't so soggy.

Dinner at the Pasta Bar. It was good.

Here we are on the train back to our hotel. It was a double-decker one this time. FUN.

We were trying to figure out what the picture rules all mean't. No smoking, no talking(this one took a little time to figure out), no cell phones, and no pretending to be Jesus on the cross?!? The last one stumped us. We still have no idea.

We survived day 3 without being run over by a car, bike, bus and today they added in the tram. Honestly, you have to be careful crossing the street and if you think your on a sidewalk you had better be alert, because at anytime a car could be coming straight at you. It is dangerous walking. They don't seem to appreciate those who walk as we do back home. We have breakfast included at our hotel and it is a buffet style, which is a great way to try their foods. We had some cute little rectangle pastries with chocolate in the middle and they were excellent. We had some granola and that was great too. My only problem was I couldn't find any milk to put on it so I ended up using half and half. (at least I think that was what it was) Troy seemed to find the milk ok, I don't know what my problem was, maybe I was still sleepy. The fog welcomed us yesterday and today we were accompanied by rain for the duration of our museum tour through Amsterdam. It was damp and cold, so we were thankful for the canal bus ride from place to place. At the end of the day, we were looking for a place to eat and being the tourist we are took about 4 steps into the "Red Light District" before realizing it and turned right back around and made haste out of there. On our canal bus tour they told us about the first Protestant Church and it was beautiful and my heart cheered to think of the hope of Christ in the middle of such sinful living that goes on here. Then he proceeded to tell us that now days they have concerts and ballets. Boo Hoo! Seems they should be reading the word of God to give these people freedom from sin, hope and healing. As we looked for a place to eat dinner we stumbled about 4 steps into the "Red Light District" before we realized and then high-tailed it out of there. After we ate we talked about how ironic it is that such a place is literally build on sand. Earlier in the day we meet some people from Canada and they shared we just have to see the "Red Light District". But to be honest, we saw a group of youth rolling a joint, men who live an alternative lifestyle, and some graphic window displays and that was plenty enough to break my heart over the captivity those people are in, I can't imagine being in the thick of it. So sad. Although, I saw a big building on our way to the train station that said, "Jesus loves you." and had a big arrow that was lite up saying "Green Light District". I hope to check it out tomorrow when we return to try to be like the locals and ride a bike around. Hopefully it won't be rainy.