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We had a great final day in Amsterdam! We rode bikes all over the city and didn't cause any accidents, although other riders did ding their bells at me a few times.
The morning started off well, when the Aussie we hired the bikes from directed us to a coffee shop run by a guy from Melbourne. Best cup of coffee I've had in nine months! Thanks Aussie mafia!
After a proper day-starter, we rode our bikes through some residential suburbs down to Vondel Park. We rode around the big park and back to the parks behind the Museums. We then went through the eastern part of the city which was interesting, as we hadn't been that direction before, and the neighbourhoods were more ethnically mixed. We then chugged around the islands north of the harbour and back to town. By the time we stopped at the last Amsterdam windmill-cum-brewery, it was after 3:00. We had a good lunch there, before heading back to turn the bikes in at 5:30. It was quite a work-out, but we really saw a lot of the city and travelled as the Dutch locals do. The bike traffic lanes are pretty hectic and have their own traffic lights. Locals come flying from all directions, but as I said, Peter and I poking around, consulting the map every 50m didn't cause any permanent damage.
This evening we walked down Prinzengracht to the Anne Frank museum. We didn't have tickets, and it's hard to get in without waiting in line for hours, but we lucked out and scalped some pre-booked (no waiting) tickets from a Canadian. I'm glad we got to see the home where Anne and her family hid for 2+ years. It's so hard to imagine what that world was like - and it was only 70 years ago.
Afterward we went back to the train station and bought our tickets to Bruges tomorrow. We saw everything in Amsterdam I wanted to - on this trip, anyway - and feel like we've had a pretty good intro to this city. Goodbye Amsterdam - what a fantasic place!
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Peter We only waited an hour to get into Anne Frank Haus yesterday. The queue was long but moved at a good pace.