Initial thoughts: coffee shops just oozing with the smell of nothing other than weed. You would walk past people smoking and instead of smelling cigarette smoke, you smelt the iconic smell of hash. And bikes and canals. If I could describe Amsterdam in three words those would be them: weed, canals, and bikes!!
One of many coffee shops we passed:
So finally we found the hostel (you had to enter a bar to get to the actual hostel) and set our stuff down. By this time it was 12:30 am, but given that this trip involved James and I we decided to head out and get a look at the city at night. We turned left out of our hostel, left onto a small street, and then an immediate left, and guess where we were? None other than the Red Light District!! (I was surprised at how small it was!!! Not as long of a street as I expected) So odd... girls just sitting in the windows, some texting, some posing for customers. I even watched a guy exit one of the rooms that had the curtain closed. I have never seen anything like it. I decided I wasn't fond of it, especially since it seemed I was the only girl on the entire street. James, however, kept on wanting to go back. Of course. Anyways, it turned out to be a wonderful night. We took in Amsterdam, sat on the steps of a canal and just hung out. We didn't make it back until 4:30 am.
We woke up at 8 am to hit the Anne Frank house. I had heard it was better to be early because the line gets REALLY long. Woke up got dressed and looked outside. It was POURING. I have no pictures of that morning because it was too wet to take my camera out. James and I are BAMFs, so we headed out.
James not looking to happy, more like miserable:
That was... MISERABLE. Soaking wet, trying to find the Anne Frank house. We pulled out our map and it got unreadable. So then we had no map, I realized my rain jacket wasn't completely waterproof, and James' camera seemed to have some water damage. Finally we found the house. Super wet. The line was almost nill, I think because of the weather and because we did get there early enough.
It was very nice and touching. It had Anne's diary and the swinging book case was still there. There was no furniture because Otto (Anne's dad) had requested that it be unfurnished. However, pictures that Anne had hung on the wall were still hanging. I was actually surprised had how big it was. I had always pictures a Harry Potter like living situation (under the staircase). I don't know if this was because it wasn't furnished or if I just didn't realize how many people had lived there. Regardless of this, it was still amazing that they lived there for two years, unable to open a window, tip toeing around so they wouldn't be found. A great experience, I would recommend it to anyone visiting Amsterdam.
Canals and bikes were everywhere in Amsterdam. I loved that part of the city:
After we made it through the house, it was still pouring outside so we sat in the cafe of the house and had a hot drink. The line by this point was huge and I think we determined we were glad we had woken up and trudged through the pouring rain. It gave us more time in Amsterdam. Even though by this point my underwear was soaking wet. Before we went anywhere else, we had to change. So we headed to the hostel, relaxed for a few warm minutes and put on some warm clothes. Then we headed off again and had some Dutch pancakes for lunch. Dutch pancakes are more like pizzas in term of the size and crepes in term of texture. I got a banana and chocolate one and James got a vegetable one. Both were very good.
Next was Heineken! It was kind of like the Guinness Brewery. I liked Heineken a little bit better. It was more interactive, and had different things that you could do. We got to taste wort, the non alcoholic stuff before it becomes beer and made our own music video which I sent to my lovely mother. And of course, the prize at the end!! Two half pints of Heineken. It tasted excellent... we were lucky to find seats and to sit across from a nice British couple. We had good conversation until our Heineken was finished and we headed off to Vondel Park, in close proximity from the Van Gogh and Reinjks Museum (I'm sorry if those are spelled wrong!!)
Here we relaxed for a while. It was nice to be able to catch up on some sleep and soak up some sun that had been missing earlier from the day. We ate some food we had bought and enjoyed just relaxing!!
We then headed back for some dinner and then to the hostel. We had planned to go out that night on a pub crawl but I was exhausted and crashed fairly early.
Food was also interesting in Amsterdam. There were fast food places everywhere (hmm I wonder why?) There was even one place that had a vending machine for hot junk food (called Febo).
The next morning we woke up and headed to the Van Gogh museum. By the time we got there, we had very little time to actually go inside and see the paintings, mostly due to the fact that the airport we were flying out of was an hour and a half away from Amsterdam. After a morning stroll, we headed back to the hostel for our bags and then to the train station to catch a train to Eindhoven, where our plane was taking off from.
Off to Italy!!!!
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