Day 10: Amsterdam, Netherlands

I saw more bicycles today than I’ve ever seen in my life! Thousands and thousands of them! There was even a four story bicycle “parking garage,” where the above photo was taken. Amber and I were nearly taken out many times throughout the day.
We started out the day by taking a canal cruise through the city, which was really cool, other than the fact that our first boat broke down and we had to wait for another one to come get us. On a positive note, we finally had an awesome guide for the day. She was very informative and funny. One of the many tidbits that she shared with us was the fact that Amsterdam has more canals than Venice, which I found surprising. The canals are essentially streets - it was a really great way to see the city. Some of the “parking spots” on the water cost upwards of 200,000 euro (no boat included). Pretty crazy! After our tour of the city we loaded back onto the buses and made the short trip to the Van Gogh Museum.
At 18.50 euro, the museum is rather pricey, but well worth it, in my opinion. They give you personal audio devices that explain a lot of the influences and themes of the paintings, along with excerpts from Van Gogh himself in letters to his brother, Theo. Although he is famous for his second Starry Night, I really liked all of his paintings - some much more so than Starry Night. I think my favorite is Landscape at Twilight.
After the museum we walked the street for a while in search of a place to have lunch. We finally decided on a sports bar, where Amber had a cheeseburger and I had dutch meatballs in gravy. They were showing a replay of the 2006 World Cup Finals match between France and Italy, which kept us entertained for a while.
After lunch we walked the streets for a while and found a family of birds nesting on a piece of floating styrofoam in the canal. There were four recently hatched chicks chirping and swimming around while mom and dad found food for them. Sadly, the nest was comprised mainly of twigs and trash. We watched them for a good 20 minutes, it was quite the find by Amber.
We made our way back to the boat and watched Talladega Nights before falling asleep (Amber and I love Will Ferrell :p) Dinner time came, so it was back to socializing with the old people for a while. We were both fairly tired from walking around all day and we felt like we had seen enough of the city, so we decided to just chill on the boat for the night....

Amsterdam - 7/10