And it is Amsterdam. Dianne found a great camping ground just on the edge of town surrounded by Canals. The campground sold 3 day tickets where you could swipe on or off the tram as much as you liked. This worked really well.

Click on the images for Hi Res or a Slideshow

The first night we went in to have a bit of look around and ended up having tea in the town and checking out the red light area.

Day two we got up early and headed in so Fiona could check out the Art in Rijksmuseum.

A Famous walk bridge

One of the oldest foot bridges over a canal

Bike mayhem

The car accident on the bridge

A Dethleffs in the campground 🙂

Lots of young people in tents in our campground.

Gary, Fiona and Dianne at a cafe

On the way there was a car accident on one of the bridges so that was as far as the Tram could go. One of the downsides of Trams of course is they can’t go  around the obstruction so we walked the rest of the way.

While Fiona was at the Art Museum, Gary, Dianne and I got on a Hop on Hop off round and Round open roof ferry. For 19 Euros, we could go right around the city by Canal with an audio commentary which was fantastic. Not great for taking piccies as you could only shoot out of the sides.

One of comments which came across was that the canals are 3 metres deep. One metre of Water, One Metre of Mud and another Metre of bicycles 🙂

On our third day there, Fiona and Dianne were keen to check out a Diamond Factory. I didn’t think I’d like it but I found it quite interesting. It was quite tourist tatty and the free coffee was awful but great to see.

One of the curious things I found with Amsterdam is Bikes have right of way over EVERYTHING!

The Bike lanes are everywhere and they go like the clappers and they simply ring the bell if you get in their  way. It is quite intimidating. Also in the bike lanes are scooters and small cars and they go even faster. Often there is only a few inches between the edge of the footpath and a scooter doing 30-40kph! .. Its not uncommon to see people speeding along on bikes on their cell phone with a child strapped on somewhere.

So much history.. most of the buildings are centuries old and some have a lean either forward or sideways 🙂

Amsterdam is a really interesting city. Next were moving on to Germany.