Dam Square and Amsterdams Historisch Museum
Today we headed for the city centre. A five minute walk from the campsite took us to a tram stop – interesting to see all the graffiti under the bridge we had to cross – the kids were surprised about it all but we decided we all quite liked it. Interesting to discuss the implications of a more libertarian society. The Netherlands seemed to us to be a strange dichotomy of a very ordered society, and yet with this laissez faire approach to some things … anyway. We went straight to Dam Square and looked around there for a while, the children desperate to spend their holiday money! Anna bought a bag, Abbie got a necklace, and Joe bought Spiderman 2 on DVD!!
We went into the diamond centre and looked at expensive jewelry, then found a a friendly diamond cutter who showed us the diamond he’d been working on.
Had a picnic lunch afterwards, stopped to watch a really good band in Dam Square, then walked down a shopping street looking at the similarities and differences in shops.
We went into the Amsterdams Historisch Museum and looked around there for the afternoon, which was really interesting, if a little big to be able to take everything in! After that everyone was fairly tired so we had an icecream then jumped on another tram to Central Station – a beautiful building but disappointingly mainly behind scaffold at the moment. From there we went back to the campsite.
After tea we sat around writing postcards, eating sweets, visiting the goats, the kids went off scootering round the site while we sat enjoying a beer and intervals of child-free time! It began to rain during the evening and didn’t stop until mid-morning the next day.