Amsterdam

This weekend I will be visiting Amsterdam! While my brother is quite excited and jealous of my visit, it's not all cannabis and sex in the small but well known coffee shops. Yes, I'm sorry to shatter your hopes and dreams but, Amsterdam is so much more!

I will only have a few hours in Amsterdam to be honest but I will be going on a Free Walking Tour and then just wandering and hopefully taking a ton of photos too.

The walking tour I am going on begins from the National Monument at Dam Square and covers:

• The Old Church
• The Red Light District
• The Jewish Quarter
• Royal Palace
• The Jordaan District
• The Anne Frank House
• The Dutch East India Company
• The Begijnhof Convent
• Masterpieces of Dutch Art
• The Widest Bridge and Narrowest House

Other things I want to see while there include:

• House of Bols - a jenever (Dutch gin) museum run by the Bols distillery. The hour-long, self-guided tour includes a confusing sniff test, a company history and a cocktail made by one of the bartenders who train at the academy upstairs. You must be aged 18 or over to visit.
• Anne Frank Huis - (As in, I want to go inside this museum) With its reconstruction of Anne’s melancholy bedroom and her actual diary – sitting alone in its glass case, filled with sunnily optimistic writing tempered by quiet despair – it’s a powerful experience. The focus of the museum is the achterhuis (rear house), also known as the secret annexe, a dark and airless space where the Franks and others observed complete silence during the day time, outgrew their clothes, pasted photos of Hollywood stars on the walls and read Dickens, before being mysteriously betrayed and sent to their deaths.
• Heineken Experience - On the site of the company’s old brewery, the newly renovated attraction let’s you take a self-guided tour that’s tantamount to brew-worship. Learn the history of the Heineken family, watch Heinie commercials from around the world, visit the horse stables and make your own music video. In the Experience’s crowning glory – a multimedia exhibit where you actually ‘become’ a beer – you’ll get shaken up, sprayed with water and subjected to heat. Afterward you get to down a couple of cold ones (though it should be noted that the suds are dismissed as ‘old man’s beer’ by many locals, while being sold at a premium abroad.)