Croissants and Pay Toilets (Part 2)

So where did we leave off? The Arc de Triomphe and going to church in Paris.

After church we hit the road for the Netherlands. I had no feelings one way or the other on the Netherlands and I had no preconceived ideas about what we would see there. That being the case though, let me say that it was awesome! Our first stop traveling that day was in Rotterdam.

Rotterdam was pretty much leveled by Allied bombers during WWII and so the city looks very modern. The food was amazing the people were great. We walked around enjoying the street scene and cool architecture. Then we got back in the car and headed to our hotel outside of Amsterdam.

The hotel was great and it was situated in the probably the quaintest little dutch suburb that you'd ever see. In the morning we got up and stopped by a bakery next to our hotel where I absentmindedly, but fortunately, grabbed a croissant. I began eating as we were walking to the train station to go into Amsterdam and it suddenly dawned on me that this was, in fact, the most amazing croissant that I had ever put between my lips. So I went back and got another one. In hind sight I should have bought them all.

We walked through the neighbor hood to the train station with all of the parents taking their kids to school on bikes. Arriving in Amsterdam was quite impressive as you come into their gigantic and impressive train station.

We wandered around, ate food, took a canal ride (where we mostly napped), and

we also went to the Anne Frank house. I initially had no feelings one way or the other on going to that, but it was a really well set-up museum and a very marking experience. I was glad we went. The flower market was selling a fair amount of pot (in truth the city smelled of marijuana quite heavily in places). The cheese shops were delicious and the cool air was nice. After the Netherlands it was on to WOLFSBURG, GERMANY!!!!!

I believe the above picture pretty much sums up my joy of visiting the capital of the Volkswagen universe. This is me crawling out from under the first 4x4 bus prototype. At the VW museum I touched EVERYTHING! It was early in the morning and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was fantastic. After that we went to wandered around Autostadt (VW's car theme park dedicated to all of its brands) and then we got to take the factory tour. Touring VW's first factory was really great. They build their Tiguan model there now, but being able to experience some of that history was very cool.

 Stay tuned for part 3!