Much to do in Amsterdam

Let's start with our arrival in Amsterdam - the train station is quite a lovely building:

Amsterdam has tons of canals and is like a thriving Venice where non-tourists actually still live.  Many of the canals are lined with houseboats:

There are tons of things to do in Amsterdam.  There are museums for everything - Dutch artists (we went to the Rijksmuseum), cheese (we walked past one of these but opted not to visit), and houseboats:

Paul is right at home in the living room

This particular houseboat had an incredibly tiny living area for the skipper and family from the days when it was still used for shipping freight.  The sleeping areas were incredibly small.  You can't really tell, but I'm on my knees in this picture and the bed to my side would have slept two children.  It isn't much bigger than what you can see, and the double bed on the other side was only slightly bigger than that.  There's no way a person my height, let alone taller, could have stretched out in that bed.

While wandering around Amsterdam, Paul commented that Pittsburgh needs restaurant areas like these:

Nice, shady spaces lined with trees and tons of outdoor eating.  We opted not to eat there, however, because instead, we ate in the public library.  We had dinner on the 7th floor, complete with beer!

For the record, we shared the entire meal.  I did not eat an entire pizza and a salad!

The lovely view from the library that you can sort of see in the photo above:

And I just cannot help myself.  Here are a bunch of neat photos from inside the library:

And to end, a Kate and Paul picture: