I found virtually the cheapest hostel in town, at a rate of 15 euros a night.  There were 4 bunks beds, so more room for activities. The first day in Amsterdam I tried really hard to find the Rijksmuseum, but I just kept getting so turned around so I spent until about 7pm just walking around and familiarizing myself with the area.  The next day I got up early and went to visit the Rijksmuseum (finally found it!) and I saw all sorts of neat paintings, including the famous one, "The Nightwatch". That afternoon I did something my dad has never done during the 4 times he's been to the Netherlands: went on the Heineken Brewery tour.  It was pretty sick.  That night I went out with some guys I met on at Heineken's, we did an organized Red Light District Pub Crawl.  Altogether we went to 6 pubs, all in the Red Light District, and it was actually really interesting to see it at night.  I had walked through it during the day the day before but it was much more lively at night.  The late night called for a late morning, and that afternoon I walked about 4 km in the opposite direction of all the tourist attractions, and was very happy I did it.  I walked through what was called Westerpark and it had a whole bunch of sculptures in it and it was very pretty. Eventually I was able to get to an area where I could actually breathe, no smoke in the air (cigarettes or otherwise ;) ) and it was great.  That night I went to the coolest bar in Amsterdam.  It's called the Icebar (see what I did there?).  It's a bar that's made up of 35 tonnes of ice. Even the glasses were made of ice.  We were given a coat and mittens at the door, so we were all prepared for the -10 degree climate in the bar.  In the morning I packed up (yet again) to move on to Paris.  I'm in Paris now after a long journey on the train, and thoroughly enjoint (see what I did there?) Amsterdam.