Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a bustling city, full of art, culture, canals, tall old houses with fancy gables on top, bicycles, graffiti, souvenir shops, McDonalds, marijuana cafes, and, most of all, tourists. It's alternately grubby and charming, with something for every taste---a place where the hottest tickets in town are Madame Toussaud's wax museum, the Anne Frank House, and the Van Gogh Museum (our visit was focused on art, so we only saw the third one). Besides scenes of Amsterdam, here are some paintings from the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague to give you a taste of Dutch art from the Golden Age of the 16th and 17th centuries.