Amsterdam! Day 1!

I made it here without delay and have done a fair bit of walking around the city. The apartment/condo we're staying in while Andrew's advisor/mentor is "on holiday" is really nice! He and his wife have three small children, so there are lots of bedrooms and childproof open spaces. Lots of European furniture as well (which to those in the US probably makes it look very modern and chic). Last night we made dinner, rather than go out, and sat outside and dined al fresco! Tonight, as long as it's not raining, we plan to do the same thing as all of Andrew's neighbors from the apartment he had before are going to come over for dinner.

It has been chilly here, but we've only gotten rained on a couple of times. The first day I was here, we walked around to see various things. The city is connected by various rings of canals so many of the houses and buildings have water views.

We walked to the old palace, which undergoes construction and preservation in the summer (as do most of the buildings because it's when the weather is the nicest:

Across from it is a statue surrounded by people and pigeons constantly. There's a lot of sitting and people-watching in Amsterdam (and other European cities):


We also did souvenir shopping and walked through a flower market. They had bulbs of dozens of kinds of tulips and a huge variety of exotic plants! Bonzais, birds of paradise, pitcher plants, various cacti, lotuses and all sorts of things.


And we found a delicious cheese shop!



That was all for day 1. Yesterday we did other sightseeing things, but I'll put more up on those later. Tonight we're cooking and just hanging out. Tomorrow I'm probably going to do some sightseeing and wandering the city on my own and then in the evening we leave for Italy!