Ah, Amsterdam

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January 30th 2007

Published: January 30th 2007

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This past weekend I was in Amsterdam. The Netherlands. It's been my dream to go here for I can't even remember how long. And I finally did it!!!!

It definitely came at a price, but I enjoyed nearly every minute of it, which is good because my wallet did not. 😊 No, there's nothing I would take back and that is what this experience is all about isn't it?

We left the manor on Thursday evening to take the train into London so we would already be there for when our flight took off at 6 am the next day. However, this clever tactic left us with one option. Sleeping in the Airport. Terrible Terrible experience and really do not ever want to do this again. Seriously, who spends the night sitting up in uncomfortable chairs that I don't even know why they call them chairs. Of course, part of this was my fault, because the mom in me felt that somebody should stay up and make sure nobody came near our bags or kidnapped us. Psh. Plus I can't sleep when other people around me are moving. This was real fun. Luckily we could check in at 4 am and sleep on the much more comfortable couches just past security at this point, but after checking in and getting through security and boarding, this left me with about a half-hour of sleep. score.

The other thing you should know - Airports are stupid. They don't tell you where your gate is until a half hour before it leaves, which leaves you with ten minutes to get to the gate and on the plane in ten minutes. This comes into play much later in the story with more impact. Remember this. 😊

An hour later - we arrived in Amsterdam. As we looked to where we should go - we realized the flaw in our plan. none of us understood the dutch language. Whoops. However, most dtuch people speak english fairly fluently and we didn't have too much of a problem.We then walked a good two miles to our hostel because we had no idea where it was and circled around the town for a couple of hours. Once we found it we unloaded our heavy backpacks and decided to not waste a day taking naps and such, because let's face it - we were in amsterdam and not going to waste it!

First we decided to walk a ways and visit the Anne Frank House because it was cool and didn't want to walk there the next day with all of our luggage. We walked along the canals and took in the beautiful scenery. It's such a cute quaint little city with a million bicycles. Seriously almost died about fifty times because the bikes don't stop for anybody especially tourists. I think they can smell the tourist and seek out to run them over. Anyways, it was kind of rainy so that wasn't very fun but we got into the anne frank house for free because we followed a school group in and the admissions people didn't notice. it was awesome! saved 7.50 euro! The mueseum was really cool to see. We got to see which room was which, the bookshelf that hid the rest of the house from the german police and anne franks room is preserved quite well. It was a little bit heart wrenching but good to see. We also got to see the actual diary that Anne wrote in.

We then just wondered around in little streets looking at all the shops and coffeeshops and sweet little places to browse in. We stopped into a coffeeshop just for awhile to say we'd been there and left. Got ran over by a couple more bicycles and moved on. We went to a Diamond Museum because it was FREE and sounded a little bit appealing. After all, diamonds are a girls best friend. We were showed how Diamonds were made and made our way to the showroom. it was. unbelievable. I was such a happy girl. They even let me try on this beautiful beautiful 6 carat diamond ring - princess cut. I freaked out a little bit because it was just a little out of my price range but was sad when they took it back and put it away. We went back to the hostel at nine o'clock and completely passed out. After only an hour or so of sleep the previous night and travelling all day long by walking...we were left a liiiiittle bit wiped. We slept for a full twelve hours. it was amazing.

Saturday we got up, ate our free hostel breakfast (consisting of white/wheat bread. no toast. I know you're jealous) and started off for the day. We took pictures at the huge I AMsterdam sign and then went to the van gogh museum. It was pretty cool to see all these original van gogh paintings. I learned a lot about van gogh in my art history class last year and knew the back story on the dude. I saw the Sunflower painting, his self-portraits, and the Potato Eaters. However, I finished my looking in about a half hour. The girls I was with, continued looking for the next two and a half. I was a teensy bit bored. After we got out of there, it was 2pm and we were starving. We went to a little dutch restaurant because I wanted to get some authentic dutch food because afterall....when in rome..... I had a fricadel sandwich with a side of frieds because I am completley obsessed with fries in europe. A fricadel sandwich was basically a sausage that I needed to cut in half on ciabatta bread. it was pretty delicious. I got a traditional dutch dessert - proffertjes? I think? it was bite-sized heaven in my mouth. I can't stop raving about the wonders that are these.

After stuffing ourselves, me and three other girls wanted to finish our trip off by visitng the heineken brewery. We went and it was worth so much more than the 10 euro we paid for it. We got three free drinks throughout the self-guided tour, and a free gift of a nice silver heineken bottle opener at the end. We were the last four to leave the brewery, it was just so much fun, we got a ton of picture opportunities, went through a ride that put us in the bottles position as it moved along in the factory process, and played the henineken drums. One of the highlights of the entire trip. After this, we went to do some more last-minute souvenier shopping and me and my friend sarah decided to find the infamous red-light-district. We knew when we did. It was definitely not america. However, we decided that it was much more tame than we thought it was going to be. But glad we did it just to drink in more of the amsterdam culture.

With our trip ending - we took a train to the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to spend yet ANOTHER night in the airport. This time almost none of us could sleep because we were just so excited to get to our little beds at the manor and have a decent non-mcdonalds meal. (who knew that mcdonalds was so popular and cheap compared to most other places. just as disgusting in europe though.) Once we were able to check in, we slep for about a half hour again before they told us our gate number, and we walked toward the gate, went through security and hurried toward our gate because they had just announced the final boarding call for our flight. which is funny because the flight did not leave for another half-hour. RIDICULOUS. they yelled at us a little bit, and luckily one of my friends quickly said that we got held up at security, because I was about to go off on them. You dont mess with Alyssa on only one hour of sleep and stupid airport policies on not listing the gate numbers. 😊

Two trains and about six hours later...we made it back, and made me appreciate Harlaxton and Refectory food that much more. It's beautiful to travel, but Home will always be Home Sweet Home.

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