right on bro!

I’m in Amsterdam. It’s okay. I’m staying in a hostel right on the edge of the Red Light District, which is kind of…well, sensory overload. All of the stuff about weed & prostitution is in spades - you can’t walk down the street without passing a coffeeshop emitting the smell of weed smoke, or a porn shop with dildos and DVDs in the windows, or chicks in the windows. After two days of just being around that stuff, I feel like I’m in Vegas on the fourth day.

Yesterday I went to the Rijksmuseum, which was all about the Golden Age of Dutch history (the Golden Age being defined as a period of constantly being at war with other nations, and trading slaves), pottery, and Rembrandt. They had old-school weapons there which were pretty cool.

I also went to the Van Gogh museum, which and checked out the Rembrandt/Caravaggio exhibit. The exhibit is posturing a comparison between the two painters, putting their paintings side by side. I’m not quite sure I get the significance, because the two neither met in real life nor viewed each other’s paintings, but it was pretty interesting anyway. The rest of the Van Gogh museum was pretty cool as well.

After that I just walked around a bunch, then went back to a backpacker bar near the hostel and drank a bunch of beer with the other backpackers.

I think I’m ready to move on. Headed to Berlin tomorrow morning.