We celebrated our third wedding anniversary in Amsterdam with a full day of fun! We woke to snow and blue skies – another beautiful day in Amsterdam.

 

 

We began by going to the Van Gogh museum (well, actually we went to the transplanted museum as the real one was getting remodelled). It was really interesting learning more about Van Gogh’s life and art.  We then strolled the canals past the second hand market, stopping for a pizza before heading to Cheese School.

 

 

 

Okay, Cheese School’s real name was Reypenaer Cheese, but it really was like a school! We headed under the shop and sat down at our desks, where we watched a video about cheese before getting onto the important part – tasting! We tried six different cheeses with different wines and port to go with them and learned how to taste, smell and examine the cheese (not unlike a wine tasting!) Happily, we had a little guillotine that we could use to cut as many slices as we wanted – delightful! After we had stuffed ourselves with cheese, we headed back to eat salt and vinegar chips and dip and play Settlers of Catan – the perfect day!

 

 

 

 

 

On our last day in Amsterdam I woke up with a pretty bad cold, but we decided to head out and enjoy our last day anyway.  In the morning, we went to see the excellent Rijksmuseum.  Only part of this huge museum was open as it was being restored, but we were able to see the highlights including Rembrandt’s paintings.

 

We then took a canal cruise through Amsterdam and out to the harbour.  The canals in Amsterdam are beautiful – we loved cruising on them. For our last adventure we went to the Heineken factory where we had fun touring and tasting the Heineken – we even got to take a last canal ride on the free Heineken boat to finish our time in Amsterdam.