We had a restless night with the heat, me not feeling well, and the party goers so we slept until 7 a.m. Then I found out there was no hair dryer in the room! Ah well, at least I had had my hair cut short for this trip and it was hot outside. Down to breakfast we went—it was a lovely spread and the breakfast room had windows on two sides overlooking the canal. What fun!

Our first experience to day was to visit the Van Gogh Museum. We walked across the Museumplein and were we ever shocked! What a mess! This was where they had set up a giant screen for people to watch the world cup game and as a result the entire area was covered with trash! And puritan me was shocked that along with enclosed toilets for the crowd were open air urinals! And there right in front of us was a man urinating. Well that’s not something one would see in the U.S., is it?

After some wandering around we finally found the front entrance to the museum. Of course there was a line, but it was moving very quickly. The museum was just wonderful and definitely one not to miss. There were many Van Gogh paintings that we had never seen. By the time we finished it was lunch time and there was a café at the museum so we decided to just have lunch there. We shared a salmon club and I had a small bottle of cuvée white wine while Mike had a small bottle of red wine. The food was actually good—one never knows in these museum restaurants. 

After lunch we made a quick souvenir shopping trip in the museum shop and then walked to the Hortus Botanicus, considered to be the earliest botanical garden in Europe. It was a lovely small garden. After walking around we were tired so decided to have a snack at the garden café, I had hot chocolate and Mike had coffee plus a brownie. 

It had been a busy day so we walked back to our hotel to rest for a little while. The question then arose as to where we would have dinner tonight. While perusing the guide books we came across the Café Americain where the infamous spy Mata Hari had her wedding reception and honeymoon. Okay that was the place. We were SO glad we decided on this restaurant as it was an astounding place. The interior is protected by Dutch law and kept the same way it was when Mata Hari was here. We shared an appetizer of salmon tartare with tiny Dutch shrimp (we laughed as it looked like a can of cat food had been put on our plate with extremely small shrimp that looked like insects dumped on top!). Along with our appetizer (it was good even though the look was somewhat off-putting) we each had a glass of wine (white for me and red for Mike). For dinner Mike had a steak sandwich with chips and I had a tuna steak sandwich with chips—both were good. And we decided to have a liqueur for dessert-Mike chose an Oude Jenever (Old Dutch gin) while I had an Amaretto.

After dinner we slowly walked back to the room enjoying our time here in Amsterdam. Once we got back in the room we tried to go online but couldn’t. So we just said-oh well, we will try again tomorrow.