Amsterdam - days 1, 2, and 3 AND 4

Our time so far in Amsterdam has been really relaxing and enjoyable (and no, that is not referring to the city's infamous recreational pastime). Our hostel is situated on beautiful Vondelpark, where you see a variety of people running, biking, picnicking, sleeping, enjoying the scenery, and, of course, smoking pot. Everyone here seems to be quite fit, and the biking part of the culture is fascinating. Fun fact: families here have, on average, 4 bikes, and often they own more bikes than the number of family members.
The day we got here, we checked into our hostel in the late morning (we were up at 4 to make our way to the Edinburgh airport for our 7 am flight), and went right to Vondelpark to check out our surroundings. Since our hostel has a kitchen (small but functional), we have just been going to the supermarket Albert Heijn and cooking our own food. After initially being overwhelmed by the total Dutch packaging and signs, I became extremely thankful for a very handy label addition to all Albert Heijn products: a picture of wheat with a line running through it for anything gluten free. Very helpful indeed.
That night, Kev and I headed downstairs to our hostel bar after eating, where we met two guys who we ended up going out with after a couple of drinks at the hostel bar. Jason, an American, was just here for the weekend, but is currently working in marketing in Dusseldorf, Germany. Louis, a french-speaking Swiss student, is finishing up his mechanical engineering degree this year. Both very nice guys, we just walked around the heart of Amsterdam and ended up at a little corner bar.
On our second day here, we rented bikes for three days (until we leave) and started exploring the city by bike. It's fascinating how the city revolves over the use of bikes, the right of way goes bikes, cars, pedestrians (or bikes, pedestrians, cars.. It's hard to tell). It's extremely efficient and doesn't take us any time at all to get around. We checked out the Red Light District first by daylight, then again by night. It was a very surreal experience, it was extremely eye opening seeing all the prostitutes in the windows and interesting characters wandering the streets. We met a fellow Canadian named Cody (from Vancouver) who's applying to law school this fall. The three of us went out to check out the Red Light District last night, and afterwards met up with two Australians that Cody had previously met. The five of us ended up at a club where they had live jazz music, and a man in his late 60s with amazing foot work, out-dancing everyone on the dancefloor.
After a late night out, we slept in a little later than we would have liked today, and went to Vondelpark for a run (rollerblade for Kev - hostel rents them out). We then biked to the train station where we officially got our eurail passes validated, because we're off to Bruges, Belgium on Wednesday! After some additional sightseeing, we came back to the hostel to make food before spending the night out roaming the canals with some traditional Dutch ice cream from this place they have called McDonald's.

Our final full day in Amsterdam included visiting the Anne Frank house and going out for a nice dinner and bike ride around town and the Red Light District for the final time.  The Anne Frank house was a very moving story based off a Jewish girl, Anne Frank,who wrote a journal while in hiding from the Nazis. We got to walk through the business where her and her family and friends hid before being ratted out by an unknown informant while reading quotes from her journal and watching tapes of those close to her speaking of the situation, including one from her dad, Otto. Otto was the only one of his family to survive the German concentration camps.

Off to Bruges, Belgium for some beer, whaffles and chocolate..

Holly and Kevin