Who would have though you could find such good Indonesian food in Amsterdam?

I could get used to these breakfasts. We're getting fed very well, here. Despite being on a pretty busy canal, we're sleeping pretty well, too. Our room comes equipped with a white noise generator that does a great job of masking the street sounds.

Our canal boat ticket was good until noon, so we high-tailed it to the central station where we were going to catch the "Grand Circle Cruise" which took us around the perimeter of the city along the outermost canal. Most of the canal houses are starting to look the same by now; so the only really interesting part of this water bus line was the old-timey windmill that is now home to a local brewery. One other interesting thing along the canals is all the houseboats. There are over 2000 of them throughout the city. I think they are all pretty much permanently moored to the banks and the narration on the boat said that almost all of them have hookups to city gas and city water. It's kind of like a giant city-wide trailer park on water. Some of the boats look really nice; some of them are complete dumps.

After one "Grand Circle," our ticket had expired, but we decided to just stay on the boat until it made another half-loop around the city and got off at the Albert Cuyp Market. This particular street market had gotten some mention in our guidebook, but the reality wasn't nearly as nice as the description. The food stands were amazing; but the rest was like a big flea market. We had lunch at this little bagel place near the market and then began the long walk back towards the hotel via the floating flower market and the Leidsestraat shopping street. We came out of there relatively unscathed, with just a couple chunks of Dutch cheese.

Probably the most interesting museum we went to was at the "Amstelkring." This was a Catholic church that had been established in an attic during a time when being a Catholic was illegal in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, they were doing quite a bit of renovation to the actual church, so we couldn't see it in all its splendor.

Since there really is no such thing as "Dutch" cuisine (besides the omnipresent pickled Herring stands), we decided to have Indonesian food. Our plates (called "Nasi Rames") were just huge sampler platters of all kinds of dishes. My favorite one was the chunks of pork on a skewer that had some sort of barbeque sauce marinated on them. The whole thing was amazing.

Our final "tour" in Amsterdam was a semi-guided tour of the Grand Hotel Sofitel. Apparently, the hotel is located in a fairly historic building, and the concierge is all too willing to expound on the history of their "Marriage Chamber" and "Council Hall." They are rightly proud of their property there.

Early morning tomorrow so we can get to the airport in time to fly over to Gatwick. Pepijn is getting up early with us to cook up another yummy breakfast.