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Published: October 14th 2008
Mom, guess what?
I'm staying in Amsterdam.My first adventure in Europe! I went to Amsterdam. It was awesome!! Let me try to put into words how amazing my weekend was.
My Biochem lab partner and new friend, Lily, who is from New York and is also studying abroad this semester, has family in Holland; she actually has dual citizenship, which is cool. Her grandfather owns an apartment in Amsterdam, so Lily said that there would be a free place to stay if we ever wanted to go. Five of us - Lily, Margaret, Tina, Ellyn, and I - decided sort of on a whim that we wanted to go to Amsterdam this past weekend. So we did!
People aren't kidding when they say traveling in Europe is easy. Lily, Ellyn, and I decided to fly from Norwich NWI straight to Amsterdam Schiphol (mostly because Lily and I have lab on Friday mornings and skipping is not an option). Margaret and Tina roughed it up a bit and took a 13-hour bus/train/ferry/bus/train route starting Thursday and met us in Amsterdam Friday evening. The flight itself was less than 45 minutes, which was great.
The three of us, upon landing, went on sort of a scavenger
hunt around the outer parts of Amsterdam in order to obtain the key to the apartment. Lily's grandfather was unable to get it to her personally, so he gave the key to her great uncle, Jonah, who gave it to his neighbor friend because he wasn't able to meet with us Friday night himself. It took us about two and a half hours of running around a random residential neighborhood until we got ahold of the key. The directions given to us to find this lady's house were so confusing they might as well have been in code, and we basically did a huge loop around the area only to find out that this person's house was only about two blocks away from where we started. It wasn't very fun carrying our luggage around and we complained the whole way as all grateful American children tend to do, but I have to admit that it was great to get to see all of the gorgeous buildings while we walked. Amsterdam is so completely beautiful.
By the time we finally got the key, met Margaret and Tina at the train station, and found the apartment, all of us were exhausted.
There was no partying to be had on Friday night. Saturday, however, was a different story.
We started walking around Amsterdam fairly early - around 10:30 - on Saturday morning. Amsterdam is very walkable. There is a lot to the city, but it can be navigated fairly easily because basically all of the streets form horseshoes around
Centraal Station (the train station). However, pedestrians beware. I felt so unsafe walking around not because I was worried about pickpockets or anything like that but because there are so many bikes! In fact, bikers have their own stoplights. It's so crazy. And they don't stop for pedestrians. I think I was more afraid of getting hit by a bike than getting hit by a car.
Lily took us to the
Bloemenmarkt first, which is a whole street dedicated to flowers. Holland is known for its tulips, and we got to see all of the different kinds. There were so many flowers and plants and beautiful things! If it's one thing I loved about Amsterdam, it was the amazing
color. After being in England for a while, where it's gray a lot
and people love dressing in drab, dark colors, to
see vibrant colors again made me feel so alive and young and happy. The flower market was a great way to start the tour. We stopped at a restaurant and ordered plates of
poffertjes, which are tiny pancake-like things that are shaped like small UFOs and are covered in loads of powdered sugar and served with melted butter. They reminded me of New Orlean's
beignets, mostly because of all the powdered sugar. So delicious - they also made me really happy.
We walked further and more or less 'stumbled' onto the Red Light District. Pictures of the area are not allowed, but even if they were, it would be weird of me to put them on a public blog anyway. We were there in the middle of the day, so it wasn't too intense, but I did still feel kind of awkward walking past all those windows with lingerie-clad women beckoning to people with their come-hither smiles. And by "kind of awkward" I mean very awkward. It's like when you see an accident on the highway...you don't want to really look but you can't help looking? Yeah. And I guess it made me feel really uncomfortable just because the
whole concept is foreign. Amsterdam, I came to notice, is just really open about sex and sexuality and nudity. In America, that stuff is still pretty taboo compared to Europe, so actually seeing all of that right out in the open was just really different. And I do have to admit it did make me upset seeing women put on display in the windows like that, but I tried to take it all in stride and just be there as a tourist instead of letting it get to me too much.
After that, we wandered around a bunch of narrow alleys lined with hundreds of shops. European fashion is so weird. You know when you watch runway shows and think, Man who actually wears that in real life. Well, Europeans do. And it's all so expensive! I saw a bunch of tank tops for like 50+ Euros that I can easily get at American Eagle for about $15. One weakness I have had while being here though: shoes. Europeans know their shoes. I won't tell you how many pairs I've bought, but let's just say I might have to ship a box home. Or two or four. And their
accessories are really great too. I found a pair of DNA double-helix earrings (so cool!). Well, I mean...I'm not really sure if they're truly meant to be double-helix earrings, but that's what they look like.
Lunch was grabbed at one of the many bakeries/delis open to streets. I had a humongous double hot-dog with melted cheese and spices, which was topped with a huge slice of pepperoni. It was fantastic. I have to hand it to the Dutch - their food is so good. Their fries are amazing - I will never have better fries. And the desserts! I think my friends and I basically ate our way through Amsterdam this weekend.
We then met up with one of Margaret's friends (I forget his name) from Amsterdam (they did a summer internship together), and we all went on a boat tour through the canals. It was so completely beautiful. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, which was really lucky actually because - like England - Holland tends to be very rainy and dark. The whole weekend was sunny and perfect for us; we couldn't have asked for better luck. Anyway, the boat tour lasted about an hour and was
a terrific way to familiarize ourselves further with the city. There are so many canals around Amsterdam, which makes it so pretty, especially because the leaves were turning color and reflected in the water. I didn't realize how much I missed color until this weekend.
Lily then hung out with her grandfather for a bit, so the rest of us walked around and stumbled upon the Rembrandt corner, which is his house and museum right next to each other. It was closed for the day by the time we got there, but all of us were pretty much exhausted from seeing so many things that we probably wouldn't have appreciated it anyway. We checked out the open market, which was also closing, so we decided to grab coffee and relax for a bit. We wandered around again and had dinner at a Chinese buffet, which was located in Amsterdam's version of China-town.
After dinner we wandered around the shops again and then headed back to the apartment to freshen up before going out. Lily's friend, Yuri, who studied abroad in America last year and now lives on the outskirts of Amsterdam, took us to the student-friendly area of
town, which was about a 15-minute walk from the bustling city center. The atmosphere was really relaxed, and I noticed that people don't dress up to go out in Amsterdam as much as they do in England, which was a nice change of scenery. We had drinks at the student center and then walked back to the more touristy areas near
Centraal Station and hung out and had more drinks in the square where the market is located during the day. It was really relaxing and low-key, and it was nice to see Amsterdam late at night because it is so breathtaking with all of its lit-up colored buildings and reflections in the water.
On Sunday, we started early because Ellyn and I really wanted to visit as many touristy areas as possible. The five of us left the apartment around 9:15 and got coffee and breakfast at a little cafe, and then Ellyn, Tina, and I toured the Anne Frank
Huis (house). It was a really well put-together museum and was such a great experience. I was unable to take photos, obviously, but I'll try to describe what it was like from memory. They had television screens scattered
throughout the house to play video clips of interviews of some of the important people involved. The most emotional part for me was seeing a clip of Otto speaking about finding Anne's diary and realizing that he didn't even know his own daughter. It was such a haunting experience; the atmosphere in there was completely solemn, and I felt so suffocated just imagining having to hide for so long in the dark. It was really eerie to climb through the bookshelf/secret door and continue up a flight of ridiculously steep stairs to Anne's room. In one corner, there were scratches on the wall made by Otto to mark how much his children grew during their time in hiding. It made me so unbelievably sad to see a tangible representation of how much of the girls' young lives were just not
lived. There were also etchings on the walls of quotes from Anne's diary throughout the house. There was one quote that just broke my heart: "I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free." It was a really sad way to start the morning, but I felt so appreciative the
rest of the day to be outside and breathing fresh air.
After that, our group split up. Ellyn and I visited the Museum of Bags and Purses, which really helped to cheer me up after feeling sort of depressed from the Anne Frank
Huis. It was three floors of bags and purses, wallets and coin purses, some shoes and belts and other matching accessories. Basically, it was a dream. I kept thinking how cool it would be to have the museum as my personal closet. Some of the bags were awfully weird, no doubt, but it was just really fun to walk through the centuries and to see styles come and go and to see some towards the end that resembled ones seen earlier in the exhibit. I was sneaky and took some photos because I was so tickled to be in a museum dedicated solely to purses.
Then, Ellyn and I had sandwiches while sitting on a bench overlooking a canal. We watched boats and tours go past; it was such a terrific lunch just because of the view. We then booked it to the
Rijksmuseum, which was sort of far away from the Museum of Bags
Debuenkorf
a 7-floor department store! and Purses. We felt really proud of ourselves for being able to navigate a city in which we had only been for a day and a half. It was so fun to explore and walk around such a gorgeous place. I've probably said this so many times, but seriously - Amsterdam is so flippin' beautiful I couldn't get over it. The houses are so colorful, and windows are huge because they like to let as much light in as possible, and flowers are just everywhere. It made me feel so glad to be alive.
The
Rijksmuseum was a bit pricey but was worth every Euro. I mean, you really can't go to Amsterdam without seeing its art. Again, I wasn't able to take photos (shame, I know, I wish you could all see what I saw), and it was really so magnificent that I don't think I could even put it all into words. Plus, there was so much noteworthy art that I think my blog would take until next year to finish. A lot of people dislike Dutch art, from what I've heard, because it tends to be dark, but I really enjoyed the
Rijksmuseum. It was a
Madame Tussaud
I would have loved to go in, but 1) it was freakishly expensive and 2) no time terrific collaboration of historical scenes, picturesque landscapes, still life, and portraits, as well as some modern illustrations for children's stories and an exhibit of ceramics/China/silver. Rembrandt was obviously one of the main attractions, as well as Vermeer and Jan Steen, but it was great to see work by artists I had never heard of before, too. Some of my new favorites were Petronella Dunois, who created these glorious dollhouses; Frans Post, who painted a nostalgic fantasy of a Brazilian landscape years after his return to the Netherlands; and Frans Hals, who created portraits showing people smiling and beaming, which was an appreciated change from the solemn portraits that were popular throughout the museum.
We then went across the street to the
Diamant Museum, which was really fascinating. They had a behind-the-scenes look at people working on cutting, cleaning, shining diamonds. There were loads of diamonds on display, and one had a 201-facet cut. 201 facets! It was amaaaazing. So much sparkle...it was glorious. I wished my mom was with me the whole time because we would have had a blast together there. Actually, I really missed my family this weekend because whenever I would see a gorgeous scene or
beautiful moment, I wished that the people I loved the most could have seen it too.
After that, Ellyn and I headed back to the touristy streets to shop for souvenirs. We also got
Vlaamse frieten (Flemish fries), which are just the most amazing fries I have ever and will ever have in my life. We sat on a bench in a busy street and people-watched while enjoying our deliciously golden pieces of greasy potato glory. Then, and I'm kind of hesitant to talk about this because my blog audience is so diverse, but what the hey. Ellyn and I visited Amsterdam's Sex Museum, which is a ridiculously thorough, three-level building full of...sex. Sculptures, paintings, costumed mannequins, even displays of phallic baked goods...everything revolved around sex. It was so awkward walking through, especially because there were older couples too, and it was so weird to watch them looking at stuff together. At the same time, everything was really hilarious, and a part of me appreciated how liberal the whole concept was. I have photos (they were encouraged!), but I don't think I will put them on a public blog...it's just too weird. You will all just have to use
your imaginations 😊
Because we didn't want the very last thing we did in Amsterdam to be the Sex Museum, Ellyn and I stopped at a corner near the train station and watched some street musicians for a bit before heading back to the apartment. We landed in Norwich safe and sound (and in zero time, literally, because Amsterdam is an hour ahead). And now I am back to lovely concrete and gray skies. Oh well - I think I will make the most of it and
ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free. xxx
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Zach
non-member comment
Huong, This entry was so beautiful! I can tell you were inspired by all the beauty of Amsterdam, but your description has to be just as good! I felt like I was there, which I think is the whole point of a blog. Well done, my European friend! I'm so glad you're having such a rewarding time; we have lots of talking to do, I wager.