Most fun..and for none of the reasons you are thinking

Hello all, this is a picture of the Central Station in Antwerp, another beautiful train station here in Belgium. I took this picture on the way back from Amsterdam this weekend.

We went up to visit our friend, who we know online as "Allieboo", on his way through the Netherlands on a business trip to India. I took the train up to Schiphol station to meet his flight on Friday, while my other half had to stay at work for a long meeting. As Boo is currently on crutches, he didn't get to see too much of Amsterdam, but I managed to get him a cup of coffee in a genuine Amsterdam cafe using my small stock of Dutch. It made me look like quite the expert, although if we had done anything more complicated the illusion would have collapsed!

On Saturday, after dropping off Boo at Schiphol again, Travis and I went into town to visit the Anne Frank house. It was lucky we got there pretty early. When we went in, the line was about twenty people long. When we left, the line stretched all the way down the block and around the corner! The library I worked at in San Diego hosted a traveling model of two of the rooms from the Anne Frank house, so I was curious to see how the traveling exhibit matched up to the real thing. It was...different. The actual Anne Frank house was not restored to resemble how it did during the war, furniture-wise. But we did see the actual pencil marks they made on the wall where Anne and Margo had been measured while they were in hiding. There was a guest book to sign on the way out, and we left our names, the date of our visit, and a short note. I confess, as I signed, I got pretty choked up.

After a cup of hot chocolate to fortify us, we went on to see Rembrandt's house. Like most houses in old Amsterdam, the actual building was narrow. There were four floors, each leading up to the next through a very steep, dark staircase. When we finally got to his studio on the top floor, it was amazing how airy and full of light the room was. We also got to see a big collection of his etchings, which were absolutely gorgeous.

This one was my favorite. At only 5.1 x 4.6 cm, it was also very tiny. But Rembrandt can really work an area that small!

For lunch we went to an Indonesian restaurant and had Gado Gado, a coconut vegetable dish, and Nasi Goreng. We also had fun trolling through some of the neat shops in Amsterdam, including a great used book store. Out of all of the cities we've visited, Amsterdam is probably the best loved. It's got such an interesting combination of historic and modern things all together. Yes, there are sex shops and marijuana cafes, but anyone who goes there just for that misses out on some really awesome stuff!