Wandering through the city

Today was much less stressful than yesterday. Everything seems so much easier when you're not hauling 90 pounds of luggage through the streets, and a decent map can solve so many problems. After waking up early to Skype with Kevin, I grabbed some breakfast at the hotel restaurant and started my day. Dutch people seem to wake up pretty late, which is lovely for us jet lagged Californians. We headed towards the Van Gogh Museum, exploring Cornelis Schuytstraat along the way. Unfortunately, we get to the Van Gogh Museum and see this...

The entire building was wrapped in plastic. We made our way over to the information booth which
explained that the Van Gogh museum has moved for the next 7 months, and it would have been quite a walk to get there. Instead of trekking over to its new location, we decided to walk around the museum district a little. We stumbled across the giant I amsterdam sign and took a few photos with it. We walked over to a park nearby where we played on a swing and an odd play structure for a bit. Yeah we're 20...so what? :)

After nearly being hit by a tram, we decided to go into the Rijksmuseum (the Rembrandt museum) and take a look at some old pieces of art, including Rembrandt's The Night Watch. My favorite piece in the museum was a little cityscape of a canal in Amsterdam done by a painter named Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde in 1671.

Why yes, I was dumb enough to walk in front of this.

We made our way back to our hotel walking through the Fashion and Museum District, Vondelpark, and Cornelis Schuytstraat again. Our hotel has a beautiful little patio with hanging chandeliers that sits on the canal right outside, so we ventured out there for a bit. We worked up an appetite with all that walking, so we made our way up to the executive lounge on the top floor of the Hilton (thanks dad!) where a very nice gentleman entertained himself by making us cute little coffee drinks. The view from up there was amazing. 

We ended our night with some tasty treats in the lounge and I stalked the room John Lennon stayed in! We tried to walk around the city tonight at 9:30, but everything was already closed...how strange.