Inter-rail: Amsterdam

Me and my boyfriend have booked to go to Amsterdam and we leave this Thursday. I'm so excited as I loved it so much last time I was there and so I thought I'd do a post summing up my time there last time. It was the first destination on my 3 week inter-rail trip in Summer and probably one of my favourites. It was so stunning in the Summer with the sun shining but I can only imagine it being even better in Winter, coming up to Spring! We're there for Valentine's Day too, which you might already know if you read my last post, so that is another completely fun and different experience for me! 

Amsterdam Day 1 

The first official day, the 24th of July, we just wandered around the streets of Amsterdam, taking in the the scenery and strolled around the canals on our way to the Van Gogh museum. Before we got to the Van Gogh Museum we passed the Rijks Museum which was so grand - amazing and obviously took touristy photos on the Amsterdam sign. I was amazed at the amount of paintings the Van Gogh museum had and loved the fact that it also showed art which had been inspired by Van Gogh, or art which inspired Van Gogh as it quite quite interesting to see the links and the similarities/differences between them. My favourite pieces in the gallery were probably his famous "Almond Blossom", a photograph by Emily Adrienne called "Famine Winter" and I also liked the Van Gogh's portraits which had straight block colour lines on their faces. We didn't visit the Rijks Museum but I really want to visit it when I go next week! After eating our lunch on the park in front of the Van Gogh Museum and having a leisurely stroll through the backstreets and walkways back along the canal, we arrived at the centre and decided to go to the condomerie. It was a lot smaller than I expected to be, because I thought it was meant to be a factory haha but it just sold condoms, of all different kinds. They were mainly novelty and completely unusual, with some clay animals attached and condom postcards and condoms in lollipop packets. We didn't stay very long and headed to the main Dam square and looked inside the main church before going to the Sex Museum. 

In the Sex Museum, on the first floor, it was mainly art, sculptures  and comics focused around sex and the female/male "anatomy". Upstairs was lots of pictures explaining "sex through the ages". It's quite an amusing place to go, would definitely recommend if you're up for a few laughs. 

Amsterdam Day 2

On the 25th, we headed to Anne Frank's house but after finding out that the queue was going to take 2+ hours we decided against it as we weren't spending long in Amsterdam. I reaaaally want to visit Anne Frank's house next week though. One of the must-do things... as well as CYCLING. Instead we went to the canal which is really close by and ate our lunch on a jetty thing like a picnic which was really cute. After lunch we walked around again, one of the things that I actually enjoyed doing in Amsterdam because it's so pictoresque, and stumbled on Bulldog Cafe, the first coffee shop in Amsterdam before accidentally coming to the Red Light District. It was quite amusing just walking through Amsterdam then suddendly turning your head and seeing all these scantily clad women in windows just doing their thang. It just seems so random haha. There was loads of sex shops etc in that area.