Coffee and a view

Our hotel room is a definitely on the small size.  The hotel itself is beautiful and the rooms are nice, but a bit cramped with our 2 big suitcases and us.  One of the very nice things is we ended up with a canal view from our window.  So I sitting here in the morning drinking my coffee and looking out the window from our room, with the window open too.  It's a little brisk this morning (only a high in the mid-60s), but the sun and clear sky are out in full force.  It should make for a great last day of exploration throughout the city.

Yesterday was quite full as well.  We started off trying to figure out the tram system to get out to the Van Gogh museum.  We hoped on a number 2 tram and couldn't figure out how to pay!  So we got off the very next stop and found a convenience store where we would by a tram voucher for the group.  This time we boarded a number 5 tram and found a worker mid tram who took our voucher from within her booth.  We thought we'd only be on for one stop, but she told us the next one was best for the museum.  She then proceeded to direct us over the PA system telling us to "Press the button" so the driver knows we need to stop and then congratulating us once we did... and still over the PA system.  It was actually pretty funny :)

We had a really good breakfast which I had dutch pancakes with ham and a nice beer :)  the museum was just around the corner and the wait in line wasn't too bad at all.  I've heard from many people that we needed to be prepared to wait in line for over and hour for the museum, but it only too us maybe about 10 mins.  Not bad at all.  The museum itself was pretty amazing, and the audio tour worked really well for us.  One thing in particular i never realized is that Van Gogh has such Japanese influence in many of his works.

Next on our list was a short walk away to Heineken Experience.  I'm not the biggest Heineken fan, but this tour was very well done (that and the beer tastes much better over here).  For the most part its self-guided, with the occasional worker sprinkled in to do a little talking of let you try the wart or beer.  From one of our guide books it sounded like they used to let you drink as much as you wanted on the tour, but now-a-days they limited you to 3 beers.  Which was probably a good thing since we never really ate lunch and all of us were starting to get hungry for dinner.  The tour was interesting because they don't actually brew the beer in the one-time brewery any more.  The facility is fully converted to just be a museum for tours.  At the end of the tour when you get to try the brew, you do so from a pretty cool bar area.  They have tables that have LCD tops which rotate display different map locations from around the world.  In addition, when you put your beer down, you get a virtual coaster under you glass!  And yes, the coaster follows around you beer if you move it around the table. 

Next up for us was to grab some dinner and head back to the hotel for a brief stint of r&r before heading out to a "candle-light" canal cruise.  We stopped at a Mexican restaurant for dinner, and the consensus was that it was the worst meal any of us have had.  Over priced and pretty gross... we were all so hungry though, that we ate ever last bite!  The Thai place for the previous night, was much, much better.. and cheaper too!