Amsterdam - Day 1

Nico at the main station

On our first day in Amsterdam we decided to take a boat and walking tour to get our bearings a little for the rest of the week.  It's worth walking along and investigating the boat tours as there are several along the front and the first one you come to is the most expensive.  We ended up on a tour with four different languages which lasted an hour for just 8.50 (Euros).  The tour was nice and gave us some background information and a feel for the city.

Me posing by the canal

After the boat tour we had lunch at a restaurant called La Place.  This is on the floor above the national library so has a great view over the city.  The food there is fresh and prepared in front of you, I had the salmon and Nico the steak and we were both so full we just had a tapas picnic in our hotel in the evening.

We had found quite a good walking tour on Trip Advisor on the Nexus and really enjoyed this.  It took us through the main sights in Amsterdam and as I mentioned earlier the city isn't too spread out so it wasn't too taxing.  It also took us to Anne Frank House, allowing us to work out where we had to go and what we had to do the day after as we had pre-booked our tickets.  (If you ever go to Amsterdam I seriously recommend booking as many tickets as possible online before hand.  We booked for Anne Frank and the Van Gogh Museum.  The only down side was that we had to be at Anne Frank at a specific time on a specific day.  The Van Gogh ticket was open for the whole month.  However, at both museums people were queueing down the street and our tickets allowed us straight in.