Amsterdam

Kevin had to do some training in the altitude chamber, which is conveniently located in Amsterdam. His training was on a Monday, so we went up Friday afternoon and spent the weekend touring around the city. Another guy in Kev's squadron and his wife went too, so it was great to have people to wander around with. I realize now that my photos are really random from this trip, so I just took a few from all the activities. They are also in reverse order for some reason, but it takes too long to fix it, so I'm not going to bother. We flew into Brussels, Belgium and rented a car to drive into Amsterdam. This first photo is actually from the gas station parking lot on the way back to Brussels airport...there were tons of birds in this lake, it was cool. :)



So, in the city there are these huge white letters that spell out "Amsterdam" in this park we walked through, we thought it would be fun to get our photo in the letter that spells our name (me in the E and my friend Domenica in the D)...well Kevin thought it would be funny to crop the photo so instead of saying Amsterdam it just said "terd"...thanks Kev...



As we were walking through the city we came across this Parade. We were very confused for a long time, but we finally figured it out. It was a parade for the arrival of St. Nicholas, and in Holland he is accompanied by many black helpers. They were originally know as Black Peter (in the 15th century) and it was a legand that St Nicholas gave presents to the good children and Black Peter would stuff the bad children into his sack and take them back to a pirate ship! Random, but now he's more like a jolly elf. So this parade was all people in blackface handing out gingerbread cookies, and at the very end was St. Nicholas on a horse. You just never know what you're going to find in Amsterdam! :)



Of course they would be in an American Police car...why not?


Here is one with lots of people in costume...


We also went to Madame Trussauds wax museum. It was amazing how realistic the people were. It was funny because they would have famous people like George Bush, Obama, Madonna etc, but then they would just have random people around the museum...like sitting on a bench, so you would walking by, and you would say "excuse me" to this person with there foot in the walkway...then you realize they are wax! It was kind or creepy actually! Here is Domenica with her new boyfriend:)



It was also kind of strange how many of the people they had were American. I only know one Dutch celebrity, so I guess I'm always a little suprised that they know all the same actors as Americans.

We also went through the famous redlight district. It was not what I thought it would be at all. It really wasn't as outragous as I thought. Yes, there were girls obviously selling sex in the windows, but really it was just the area for nightlife. There were clubs, bars, restuarants etc. Overall a great weekend, we will absolutely go back!