beautiful AMSTERDAM, netherlands (july 2013)

I absolutely loved visiting Amsterdam! It is so beautiful, with the canals interspersing the streets, bicycles everywhere, and crooked narrow little Dutch houses. Great beer, and so many small specialized museums. I definitely need to come back here.

I rented this bike for 3 and a half days for only 21 euros! Amsterdam is a city designed for bikes from the ground up, not just as an afterthought. Throughout the city there are lanes for bikes, many of them with curbs to separate them from car traffic. Bikes even get their own traffic lights. And everyone yields to bikes – pedestrians, cars, trams, everyone! It makes getting around the city so easy! (It doesn’t hurt that the entire country is as flat as a pancake.)

There is some great drinking to be done here!

My favorite part: Some beautiful images of the canal-side buildings…

The Van Gogh Museum wasn’t just full of amazing paintings by a brilliant artist, it was also full of interactive explanations of Van Gogh’s painting process – the materials he used, the experiments he performed, his process of thickly layering colors on top of each other.

A beautiful central park –

An old man was feeding pidgeons, and FOUR herons stopped by to mooch –

Aside from biking, another local pastime is to get a group of friends together and put around on a boat all afternoon. It looked like a lot of fun.

Speaking of boats, there are a ton of houseboats –

Amsterdam is so unique, it would be a great choice if you’re looking to visit somewhere to break yourself out of a rut. It’s strikingly beautiful and peaceful for its size, and there’s so much to do here!