We arrived in Amsterdam in the afternoon with a hotel all picked out with a room reserved.  Caroline even had the foresight to grab a map at the train station so we could find our hotel, The Quentin Hotel, on the first try.  We were feeling like professional travelers.

We quickly dropped our bags, and navigated the steepest stairway we'd ever seen, and headed out to the town to see what we could see.

The place had all the requisite attributes of an Amsterdam hotel, it reeked of dope in the lobby, the staff was very relaxed, and it was overlooking a peaceful canal near the bustling plaza of Leidesplein.

Caroline and I tried to get into the Anne Frank house.  Big mistake.  It was a holiday in Holland today, and it was already in the high part tourist season.  So we repaired to a cafe to figure out what we'd rather do instead if standing in the incredibly long line.  These accordion players showed up.  But that wasn't novel, or even particularly interesting by itself.  The dog in the picture started howling along with the playing.  It was pretty funny to watch and listen.

The bird is some kind of Egret, but Caroline thought that it might be a Stork and couldn't let it get away.  This time I was the one that got away, so to speak...

We proceeded to the Dam Place, or main plaza to get some more guilders.  The Royal Palace is located here as well.  It is notorious for pickpockets and other nefarious types.  We didn't have any problems, but this type of warning always make Caroline prematurely nervous.

We visited the Royal Palace, which was the original town hall and offices when it was built.  It was turned into a palace later.  All the ornaments attest to the incredible power and economic standing of Amsterdam in the 1600s when it was at the pinnacle of western world commerce.  This picture is the main lobby where the marble floor shows the eastern and western worlds, and the center shows the stars of the northern hemisphere.  All around the hall are symbols showing the tenets of good government and fair commerce.

One of the most interesting aspects of this government is that it had an office devoted to insurance and bankruptcy as well as several courts.  It's hard to imagine that the government was in the insurance and risk management business as well as financial work outs for troubled companies.  But they were, and it seems to have worked very nicely in it's day.  And it was all done from this building for a couple hundred years.

We took the 20 Tram around the town to see what it looks like.  Caroline was really good in figuring out that we could get Tram tickets at the train station, and they work all over the country.

Amsterdam isn't all that big and the Tram service is great.  The place is loaded with all these very nicely preserved brick buildings with lots of well executed details.  And then there is a great proliferation of English language signs, stores, and advertising so you always know where you are and how to get whatever you need.  it's very comfortable.  You can do whatever you need to do, have all the aesthetic benefits of being in Europe, and can do it without having to know another language.

We were looking for a place to have dinner, which had to be a Rice Table.  But, since it was a holiday, it seemed that all the Indonesian places were closed.  We ended up walking around a lot since it was pretty interesting to do so. 

Eventually we found a decent Thai restaurant.  The dinner was good, and the company was great, as always.  After dinner we looked for an internet cafe to check and send some email.  Unfortunately, the only place we found was also a coffee shop.  For those that aren't aware, that means a lot of dope is smoked there, and the air is really thick.  In itself that wouldn't have bothered us, but the connection to the net was a little slower than a severely stoned coffee house crawler.  So we gave up and went back to the hotel with another great day behind us.