Most people probably don’t picture canals when they hear of Amsterdam.  But they should because they are everywhere and so pretty!

The architecture here is cool too, with steep skinny row houses on tiny streets and bike-lined canals.  If you stop and look up every once in a while, you’ll notice a lot of interesting details in the buildings and the shape of the roofs.

Our first day, Wednesday, we were exhausted from our overnight flights, but we still walked around a lot, had a fabulous picnic dinner, and even got a quick peek at the Red Light District.

Yesterday we had a great time at the Van Gogh Museum, the Anne Frank house,  and walking around an up-scale neiborhood called Jordaan. We took this photo on a huge “i amsterdam” sculpture near the Van Gogh Museum:

And the Anne Frank house is on this street (a rectangular brick building 3 from the right):

Our hotel is really nice and has an amazing view!  We got a great deal by bidding on priceline.com (check out betterbidding.com), so this 4-star hotel in downtown Amsterdam was only $70 USD/night (a good price for this city).  Here’s the views from our balcony.

We have one more day in Amsterdam before heading to Bruges and Paris.