Our "Layover" in Amsterdam

At least, it sure felt like a layover! We added Amsterdam to the itinerary on a whim to break up the distance between Paris and Berlin, which we otherwise wouldn't have seen. Neither of us knew much about the city, although we'd been told it was a great place to visit.

After Paris, Amsterdam was a great breath of fresh air (figuratively and - mostly - literally; at least the smells here were different and less frequent). The city itself is clean, unique and beautiful; in addition to the canals, the streets are wide and everywhere we saw was lined with greenery. I wasn't prepared for the hordes of bikers, either: this is the only city I've ever seen with a multi-story parking ramp solely for bicycles. All in all, the city and everyone we've met have been very friendly and welcoming.

We spent most of our time here exploring the city streets and overlooking the canals. There's some fantastic people watching here if you camp out at a cafe, and our hotel was in a perfect location to do just that. I would love to come back here one day to do some more in depth exploring. We ended up here, entirely by accident, the day before "Monument Days," a festival when all historic monuments and most museums are open to the public for free. We thought this was going to be a great opportunity for us, but in fact it just meant that when we went out to go sightseeing this morning, the streets outside our hotel's quiet little neighborhood were packed with so many people it was hard to move. All in all this has been one of my favorite cities that we've visited so far, for all that we didn't end up doing much sightseeing, and as our train leaves for Berlin I'm a little sad to see the canals fading off behind us.