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Published: January 12th 2007
well, we made it to amsterdam. it has been a LONG few days, what with packing and preparing and moving out and an 8-hour plane ride, and now that we're here i think we're both trying to grasp the fact that we suddenly don't have a mile-long to do list. i'm in my hotel room now: the hotel is called hotel nadia (it's website is www.nadia.nl if you're interested) and is pretty close to the center of town. the stairway to get up to the lobby is the steepest set of stairs i've ever seen. the place is really cute though, and our room has a huge bay window... i can sit in the window and look at the canal and the busy street below. i'll take a picture of it tomorrow when there's light. right now it's after 6 o'clock and it's fairly dark out already. jeff and i are definitely already tired but we're determined not to give in yet... i think we'll head out in a bit to make sure we don't fall asleep too early.
to back up a bit... we took air france on both legs of our flight today, the first being an 8-hour
flight from chicago to paris and the second about an hour from paris to amsterdam. air france is definitely nicer than any u.s. airline i've taken... the food was even almost good: fresh bread with camembert, some very decent chicken & wild rice dish, and some cous cous with dried salmon. i slept off and on for most of the flight, but jeff had a hard time sleeping. it was long, but not unbearably so. plus we got to see a pretty awesome sunrise. the layover was pretty quick, and the paris airport was nothing like american airports so it kept us entertained... our terminal was all glass, ceilings and walls. the flight into amsterdam seemed to drag, since were getting antsy to get there. amsterdam and the surrounding area look really strange and quaint from the air--for whatever reason, almost all the buildings have a twin, or many identical copies, and they're all brightly colored. so from the air it looked like clusters of matching or coordinated toy houses, surrounded by farmland. i bet it would be super pretty in the summer when the flowers are blooming and everything's green. right now it's chilly and grey, but not TOO
cold... i was comfortable walking around in a light jacket and a hat. we did a fair amount of walking, too... aside from the trek to the hotel from the train station (which wasn't fun since we had all our bags and had very little idea where we were going so didn't take the most direct route). After checking in at the hotel we set out right away to explore and get some food. the town is beautiful and wacky. canals everywhere, bikes everywhere, cobblestones, strange little shops, "coffee" shops everywhere, tall narrow houses crammed together, fancy high-fashion or electronics shops crammed between run-down or shady trinket shops, endless tiny restaurants serving food from all over the world... i'll have to take some pictures tomorrow... today we just wanted to look around. it was a lot to take in, and it'll be nice to get walk through it again tomorrow when we're not so tired and not still wound up from traveling. plenty of different museums to check out too--we're planning on avoiding some of the more mainstream/famous ones, actually (anne frank house, van gogh museum, sex museum) in favor of the modern art museum (forget what it's called) and a few smaller places. mostly though we don't really have a plan for the next 9 days... plenty of time to do any or all of it, so we'll just see what happens. it's great not to have obligations or appointments, although i still feel like there's something i should be doing. give me a few days, though, and i'm sure i'll get used to this.
my hotel has free wireless internet so i'll be able to write/receive emails really easily while we're here, as well as post frequent pictures/blogs. for now i need to go figure out how to make our window stop banging open and closed, and then contemplate going out again so we don't fall asleep before 7 or something. i'll post again when i have more/better pictures and some more specific things to talk about.
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Cassandra
non-member comment
Still can't believe you're gone
Dearest roommate, it makes me so happy that you are enjoying time in Europe. My home away from home! Your first day gone sounds a lot like mine did!! I can tell already that I am going to enjoy reading about your adventures. Have a great time and miss you already!