Amsterdam Continued...

Yesterday day I decided to take a free walking tour of Amsterdam, as I'd done enough exploring on my own and figured it was time to be told where some of the good stuff was.

The guide, Elysia, was quite entertaining and gave us a lot of history about why certain buildings where were they where, and took us on a tour in basic chronological order, starting from the oldest district (the red light district), through the 'Golden Age' district where most of the city was built up during its sea trade years, and then through some of the newer parts.

The whole thing went for a touch over three hours and was quite interesting. It finished up at the Anne Frank house which I'd been meaning to visit, and so I finished the tour off with that. I was planning on going on another tour later that evening, but the jet lag caught up with me a bit and I was out not too much later that night. Not that you can really call it -night- here, as it doesn't actually get dark till about 11PM, and the sun starts peeking its head over the horizon not long after 4. It's pretty surreal walking around a city at 10PM in more or less broad daylight.

Today I've checked out the Sex Museum which was basically a chronology of porn. I walked around the city a bit more, checked out the Torture Museum which informative, but not as gruesome as one might be led to believe. I'm trying to book a hostel in Antwerp, as I plan to head over there later on tonight. I want to make time to go to the Haag so I can check out the MC Escher museum before I leave Amsterdam. My mobile doesn't seem to want to call the place, so it looks like I'm going to have to work out how to use their public payphones. Hopefully thats not too difficult, and more hopfully still the hostel will actually have a bed available. Seems there's only one hostel in Antwerp, so I imagine it'll be busy. I was talking to an American dude yesterday, and he informs me that I must check out the "Culminator" in Antwerp. With a name like that, how could I refuse?