Last updated November 9, 1997

Hello folks, we're finally getting around to telling you about our lovely little honeymoon. Of course, it did take us a little time to get around to taking it. We left on Friday evening, Ocotber 17, and Amsterdam was the first stop on our itinerary.

We took a sleeping car (which was actually much more comforatable than it looked) and approached Amsterdam around 7 in the morning. Andy was looking out the window at the windmills, which I felt would be much more interesting in the light of day. Our first stop in town was the very crowded tourist office. There, we managed to get a hotel reservation and a map-- now all we needed was some money.

As we sat outside the American Express office waiting for it to open at nine, all of the panhandlers of the area were nice enough to wait with us. Finally with money in our pockets we found our hotel south of central Amsterdam (far away from the infamous red light district). When we were able to get into our room, we lugged our backpacks up four flights of very steep stairs, and so our workout began. We had an interesting room that, luckily, had it's own shower and lovely brown furry blankets on the bed. No, really, they looked like mangey bear skin. Of course they were there to hide the zebra striped blankets underneath, but at least they were warm.


We then decided to go take a look at the Anne Frank house, but discovered that the rest of the world had the same idea. When all else fails, stop and have lunch. After lunch, we decided that we would try the Anne Frank house the next morning, and headed to the Van Gogh (pronounced, in Dutch, very much like the sound you make when clearing your thoat of a moderately sized walnut) museum. They had audio guides that you could carry around the museum to tell you about the various pictures and other explanitory histories in your language of choice. This was nice considering all of the name plates and explanations were written in Dutch. It was a really nice exhibit. We saw the famous "Sunflowers" and "The Potato Eaters". Later in our wanderings we came across the work of the lesser known Bob Van Gogh and his masterpiece "The Fried Potato Eaters" seen below.

After the museum, we had to eat again, so we decided on an Indonesian restaurant that our guide book recommended. "What", you say, "you're eating Indonesian food in The Netherlands?" We did this because, according to our guide book, there is only one type of cuisine that could be considered truly Dutch. It is found in FEBO automats and is described as "little fried brown things that all look the same, some of which are good." So as I was saying, we decided on Indonesian food. After a quick read of the menu, we both decided on dishes that would let us taste a litte of everything. The waitress then asked us to move to a four person table in order to accommodate all of the food. Although you are picturing us stuffed to the gills, the meals consisted of about 900 little bowls with one or two pieces of vegetable or meat each. We did, however, eat quite well.

After dinner we went to the infamous Sex Museum and saw a lot of things that we're just too nice to tell about here. We also took a stroll through the red light district which falls under the same category.

The next day we went to the Anne Frank house and while there was a line, it just didn't look as foreboding as the day before. We also just had a good night's sleep, a hot shower, and a 'big Dutch breakfast' (a hard boiled egg, bread, and a single slice each of ham and cheese). The house was very interesting. We walked through the swinging bookcase and into the small rooms where the Frank family and a few others hid. The lower rooms were filled with pictures of the Franks as well as descriptions of the entire family history-- including, sadly, how all of them, except Anne's father, died in the concentration camps-- most within days of liberation. It was a very moving exhibit.

After that seriousness, we decided for a more lighthearted afternoon. We hopped on a bus and headed out to Edam in search of a cheese factory that our guide book said would be there and promised 'generous samples'. We searched around for the better part of the afternoon and saw it only on the bus, returning to Amsterdam. We did get to see a good part of the beautiful countryside, including many windmills and quite a few sheep. During our wanderings, we came across The Cheese Musuem which, sadly, was closed. We decided to chalk it up as a nice walk (the weather was gorgeous) and some beautiful scenery.

That night we boarded another sleeping train for Berlin.

P.S. In case you were wondering, the dremples never got us. :)


Back to Julie & Andy's Page.