Day Two(lips)

We started today off with a trip to the Anne Frank House -- a trip that merits its own blog post -- and left our hostel at 8. The thought process behind this was the same one that said, get to the Eiffel Tower super early so you don't have to wait until dinner time to see it and that is what we did.

I'm going to skip over the details of the actual Anne Frank House for now, because they belong in their own sarcasm-free post. For now, just know that our wait in line wouldn't have been bad except for the fact that we were standing behind a group of girls speaking aggressively in Spanish and in front of a family of four who clearly planned on seeing all of Amsterdam in one day and spent the entire hour we were standing there complaining loudly about the wait and trying to line jump us.

After the Anne Frank House, we took a few minutes to reflect quietly and visited the Homomonument. No, I am not making the name up, I even took a photograph of the sign so that you would all believe me.

Told you.

This monument was the first memorial in the world to the gay men and women who lost their lives during World War II and a tribute to those who are still being oppressed today.

Next, we went to The Pancake Bakery and finally got to eat some pancakes -- ok, technically, it was only a singular pancake, but it was the size of my face! We were boring and got plain pancakes instead of some of the crazy flavors they had, which include chicken, ice cream, chili, cheese and more.

We crossed the street/canal and visited the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, where we learned the history of tulips, which is about as interesting as it sounds. There were also no real tulips to be seen, which was disappointing. The most exciting thing that happened there was when I started calling it the "two-lips museum" and Whitney found a bunch of spinning stools and decided to experiment with her center of gravity.

We're mature adults.

After that, we were back to the Cat Boat. Whitney said that we needed to go back because she loves both cats and house boats and wanted to see the two together (she apparently does not remember calling me stupid when I first told her that Amsterdam has a floating cat shelter, but she did). When we first got there, they still weren't open, it was a "cat-astrophe." We weren't even 100% sure that we would be allowed to go in since we can't easily bring a cat home with us. *Please not that I did not say "couldn't" because we seriously considered it while we waited -- Whitney coined the term "trans-cat-inental" and I said that I just wanted a cat that spoke Dutch.

Cat Boat

The Cat Boat itself was pretty cool. Some of the cats were permanent residents that roamed freely, while others were up for adoption and they were sectioned off. They had a sign up with a drawing of one of the cats that said "Don't pet me. I scratch," but that cat looked almost exactly the same as the majority of the other cats there, who were mostly black and white, so I'm not sure the sign was of much use. There were different beds and toys everywhere and the cats clearly knew that they ran the place (don't all cats, though?). The cats could stay inside or climb out onto the enclosed deck. It was heaven and everything that a boat full of cats should be.

The cats were all very interested in the passing family of ducks.

We are now taking some a bit of time at our hostel to recharge before we head out for some activities to celebrate out last night here and then on to Berlin in the morning!