Amsterdam

So we are in Amsterdam, we got here 2 nights ago and it's been pretty rowdy. The first impression of Amsterdam was brutal and I instantly missed London. The street our hostel is on has around 7 'coffee' shops, 4 sex shops, live 'shows' a gay porn theatre and a condom shop. But the first night we got here made up for it, we were sitting in the pub (the winston-amazing pub, great music and cheap drinks) which is connected to our hostel, and a bunch of guys from London came and sat with us. We end up walking all around the red light district that night (I'm super glad we had guys there with us-there are really creepy people everywhere over there) and saw all the girls in the windows, and went into a few sex shops. Just a crazy crazy place. I imagined it being more touristy and less real (about 95% of the people we saw were guys, the only girls we saw were obviously the hookers and people like us who just went to see what it really was). We saw guys go into the rooms, just so dirty. Anyways we have a few drinks, walk around and go to a few clubs and experience the Amsterdam night life. Yesterday we saw more of the nice side of Amsterdam, we went for a walk around and saw all the canals, the Anne Frank house, and all the cute houses around. We went into a few Delf shops as well! Super expensive but gorgeous stuff. Last night we went on a canal tour which was neat, learned a lot about the history of amsterdam. We also went to the sex museum which was more like a huge house full of porn than a museum but oh well. Today we took a train to a little town called Putten, which is where Jesska's grandma lived before she came to Canada. It was so charming, all the houses had super nice trimmed gardens, people all smiled and said hi, it was super small so we saw a few tractors driving down the main strip, it reminded me a bit of home! And as you get more towards the outskirts of the town you start to see little fields with sheep or waterbuffalo or crops which added to the character. Very lovely town. Anyways we are about to go eat some pancakes for dinner and hopefully wake up early enough tomorrow to see the Anne Frank house- the lines are ridiculous. And then off to bremen tomorrow morning!! Peace and blessanngss.