Amsterdam has a population of around 800,000 and a bike population of approximately 1 million.  I like those stats.  Unfortunately I was not on a bike yesterday.  Instead I explored the city on foot, clocking about 16000 steps between 9:30 am and 3:30 pm.

I scoped out the Rijksmuseum, that we will tour Saturday, as well as the Van Gogh museum that we will visit Sunday.  The exterior of the Rijksmuseum is incredible:

After consulting a city map for quite some time I decided to head to the Artis zoo, one of the top places to visit in the city.  I normally don’t visit zoos, as I have a hard time seeing animals in cages, but I made an exception today as the description of the zoo and the landscape sounded like something I shouldn’t miss.

Along the way I passed the Heineken brewery:

And some beautiful homes along the canal:

As expected, the zoo didn’t disappoint. Most of the animals had far more room in their enclosures than I’ve seen in the U.S. Below are a few of my favorite pictures:

Of course it rained most of the day so I headed back to the hotel to dry off around 3:30 pm.  I met up with Jonathan a little later, and the conference he is attending sponsored a dinner at the Maritime Museum which we attended by riverboat. I met more wonderful people, several from the U.K. and one from Ireland, and enjoyed learning more about their respective countries.

Although my feet are quite sore today, I’ll be back out walking and exploring soon.  And dodging bikes!