Sunday March 16 - Amsterdam

Today we went to the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum, which have very different but excellent collections. Seeing Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” at the Rijksmuseum was definitely a highlight. We took refuge from the rain/ate lunch/watched a Georgetown basketball game in a pub that afternoon. Then we headed to Centraal Station again, to get train tickets to Brussels. Afterwards we broke up into smaller groups and did our own thing for the afternoon. Dinner all together later, and then Lauren and I went to walk around that night, observing all the Coffee Shops and the many prostitutes in their windows. For obvious reasons, nobody can take photos of the windows…

On the way to the museums, I took a photo of the main government building in Dam Square:

And the less impressive-looking (although still cool) main church, also in Dam Square:

Here’s a photo of a strange hot dog statue that was in a park we walked through:

And here’s an S&M shop:

And the window of a store with an impressive array of products made with pot:

And, for good measure, a giant yellow clog:

And a pretty picture of a canal at nighttime. The whole city looks like this at night. It really looks like it's right out of the 17th century.