Amsterdam Pt. 1

I arrived Amsterdam by train on Friday afternoon. It was a four hour train ride with only one change. Once I got to the train station, I bought a sandwich and headed to the subway station. Unlike German train stations, you have to have a ticket to get into a Dutch train station, so I had to make sure I was leaving from the correct end of the station. I then took the metro from the central station to my hotel in time for bed. I awakened Saturday morning and had a Dutch breakfast with buttered, but not toasted, sliced bread with chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag) spread on top. It was almost like a homemade chocolate pop tart, but it was quite tasty. After breakfast and after completing my weekend German assignment, I went into the heart of Amsterdam. Since I had limited time, I decided to do a combo hop-on/hop-off boat then bus tour. 
I got on the boat near the train station where most of the activity was. I chose to take the boat completely around and not hop off so I could do the same with the bus. Both the boat and the bus had stops near the train station, so that was a great place to begin the tour. The train station overlooked the Harbour in Amstel River. That is also the location where river cruises leave from, if doing a Rhine river cruise. The boat tour had an audio narration of the sites that we could see from the boat as well as interesting facts. The narration was available by plugging earbuds into an outlet in the wall beside the table you were seated. The boat first went into the harbour then back into the canals. The canal portion was about 90% of the tour. Going through the canals, we were able to see several museums such as the Van Gogh museum, Rembrandt house museum, Nemo science museum, and national maritime museum. We also went passed the Gassans diamond facility where they cut and make diamonds. We also went passed the Heineken Experience, where Heineken Beer was born and is still made. We also went passed Anne Frank’s house. 

We were able to see canals lined with house boats where people live and have been able to live there since the early 80’s when there was a housing shortage. When people first began to live in the houseboats, it meant you were poor. However, today if you are able to live on a houseboat it is costly. There are 2 kinds of houseboats, one built on pontoons and the other is in an old ship. The city prefers the old ship because it aesthetically looks better.