Shauna & Danielle Take Southeast Asia!!!! : Nothin like a good ol' tour

Today we decided to let our host, Johan take us around the city to see some areas where tourists would otherwise not go. We saw Anne Frank's childhood home. Not the house she hid in, but her actual family house which was about 2km away. Which if you think about it is pretty impressive to make it that far in a natzi infested area with constant searches taking place. We can definitely appreciate the story more that we have gotten all the background history from Johan.

Other things we saw on the tour:

-Canadian monument

-Gandhi monument

-he pointed out many of his friends and families homes

-vondelpark (sort of like amsterdams Central Park)

-many churches and buildings that his friend was in the business of restoring, and effectively did so in Amsterdam for 40 years before he passed away a year ago. Johan tells us most of Amsterdam's restoration efforts and continued history is because of this man. Can't for the life of me remember his name. Something Dutch that sounded phlegmy when he pronounced it.

- we were even invited to a Dutch art activist party which we had no idea what it was and why we were there. Johan tells us it's a great privilege to be there listening to the presentation and we even needed a code word "Lima" to get in.

So this is how that happened: we take the ferry to the north part of Amsterdam and end up smack dab in a shipping yard which also happens to have a flee market going on (more like garbage market, like thanks but I don't really want your decaying rocking horse that smells like piss. I would have rather paid money to eat a maggot in Bangkok then buy that thing!)

Anyway, pretty much Johan has many friends and wanted us to meet all of them. This old shipping yard and warehouse has been converted into a giant studio for artists to rent out the space and design their "masterpieces". Honestly I just saw a lot of junk, but apparently one of the artists we met does sculptures for cirque du solei, so I guess that was pretty interesting.

So finally we get to this artist activist presentation. Really it seemed like an activist cult of some sort. Honestly, everything was in Dutch so we had no idea what was going on. We just drank the free tea and coffee and smiled while Johan introduced us to people. I think the gist of it was these two artists who went to lima, peru to work with the community and developing them. something about politics also but again it wasn't in english or else I'm sure we would have found it somewhat interesting. 2 hrs go by and the entire time we are thinking of how to get away. The presentation is not even close to being complete, not to mention its all in dutch so we cant understand a thing, so we excuse ourselves politely, thank the host, quick wave goodbye to Johan and we are out of jail!

Spent the rest of the day wondering what had just happened and more exploring the city, walking and souvenir shopping solo this time!