Rhine River Cruise Day 7 - Amsterdam

We docked back in Amsterdam, and it just happened to be a beautiful Sunday morning, so we grabbed bikes and headed to church! It was a pretty long bike ride, so we rode shorts (which was a little embarrassing to walk into church in), instead of church clothes. No one at the church seemed to mind. They were all so nice to us! We even met some other people from Utah there. 

Sacrament was in three different languages! Dutch, English, and Spanish. 

It was really cool! It did make the hymns we sang sound very out of tune, but we loved it!

Matt and Natalie got to Amsterdam a few days early, so they showed us around the city on our bikes. 

It is so scenic - and crazy there!

More stumbling stones. 

This is Rembrandt's house, which is now a museum that houses tons of Rembrandt's paintings and artwork. We were too short on time to go in, but it was fun to see!

This is the Royal Palace of Amsterdam in the Dam Square. 

Matt tried to dance with this guy. He was not amused. 

These candy stores were so fun! We brought back way too much of it!

We found this fun authentic Italian restaurant to eat at!

Matt and Natalie took us to the Red Light District because if you go to Amsterdam, it's something you have to see. Luckily, it wasn't too bad during the day. I can only imagine what it's like at night. 

It was kind of sad to see such beautiful girls just standing in the window waiting for a guy to come pay them for sex. Most of them really were beautiful girls. The rest of the district was full of sex shops and weird sex museums. Prostitution and drugs are both legal and very widespread in Amsterdam.

You can't take pictures of the girls, but Matt and Rod managed to sneak a distant picture anyway.

Natalie and I couldn't resist taking a picture in front of the Condomerie Store. It is exactly what it sounds like - a condom store. Every single shape, size, character, color, etc. you can possibly imagine!

Later in the day, we got tickets to the Anne Frank Hiding Place. It was a very somber place to visit. The original bookcase that hid the door to her family's living quarters is still there. It was very humbling. They also had a lot of her original journal pages to see. Such a sad, sad story.  

Amsterdam is literally the city of bikes. Everyone there rides a bike - it can be crazy at times! One guide told us that there are 800,000 people and 1,000,000 bikes!

We rushed back to the ship to join the rest of the group for a canal tour. 

They took us to the Maritime Museum for entertainment and a traditional Dutch dinner. The dinner was served family style - they put a bunch of pots on our table and we took a serving and then passed them around to each person. It was pretty gross food, but it was a fun experience!

This cute lady paid me the ultimate compliments so Rod asked her to take a picture with us!

Rhine River Cruise Day 6 - Cologne

  We spent the morning in Cologne, Germany. Cologne was cool - we didn't get to see very much of it due to time. We did a chocolate tour at the Schokoladen Lindt Museum, which was pretty cool, and then went into the plaza to see the incredible Cologne Cathedral. I wish we would have time to go inside, but the line was so long and we had to board the ship by 12:15.  We spent the rest of the day and night cruising back up the river and it was BORING and so long! It was today that we realized that this is definitely an old person trip. There is NOTHING to do on the ship, so we watched the Olympics in our stateroom, exercised in our stateroom and watched a lot of trees go by! 

This was definitely the most diverse city as far as people went. I told Rod I felt like it was kind of like the land of misfits. There were also tons of homeless people here. 

The construction of this cathedral started in 1248, and was not completed until 1880! 

It was so detailed and unique! The most fascinating part of this cathedral is that it's made out of limestone, so it has to constantly be repaired. 

This little area is called the Fischmarkt. It's a historic square in Cologne. 

Our guide told us that this was Napoleon Bonaparte's favorite restaurant inspite of how much he supposedly hated Germany. 

St. Kunibert's Church

Part of the tour of the chocolate museum was getting to taste ALL the stages of chocolate. We got to taste the cacao bean while it was still raw, then dried, then chocolate with no additional ingredients, to the chocolate with sugar and chocolate butter. 

Some of it was very GROSS and bitter, but the process was incredible!

This person was drawing heart flags for all the countries out of chalk in the middle of the square. 

There is a lot of unrest in Europe, so this was a tender gesture.