Amsterdam!

---

First stop on our fall break tour was The Netherlands! My roommate Sajel and I took a 6am flight to Eindhoven where we later connected to Amsterdam, we checked our bags into the hotel and set out to explore. Thankfully we brought heavy jackets because it was FREEZING up there. We spent our first day walking through the city, amazed by all the “coffee shops” and how liberal everything was. These coffee shops in Holland are alowed to sell cannabis, which is bizarre. Amsterdam is known as the "Venice of the North" with canal streets everywhere and cute wooden boats transporting people all around. It was so beautiful, a small city with the autumn smell in the cold air.

The Red Light District- Ohhh boy. Now that was an absurd site. I’ve never seen a place so laissez-faire with things, ill let the reader use their imagination. Anyways we quickly walked through there and back into real civilization. The Dutch in general were SUCH sweet people, everyone spoke perfect English so that was nice, but anyways it had a real homey feel to it, with the cute little blonde children everywhere and pleasant and polite locals. It was just so amazing how different a place can be that is only a 2 hour flight away. The Netherlands is a much different country than Italy. First of all everyone bikes everywhere, their streets are made up of a lane for cars, a lane for the tram, and 2 bike lanes, but 95% of people get around by bikes, and they have the craziest contraptions on their bikes, fronts are usually a large wooden wheel barrel type thing, where they cart around as many as 3 kids in there! It’s crazy! Even the backs of the bikes there may be another seat or another wooden cart to hold groceries or bags, they had some hefty bikes, I have no idea how they could hold everything up and still manage to peddle. Also the Dutch are obsessed with breakfast and dairy, milkshakes everywhere, eggs, toast, bacon, and best of all pancakes and waffles! The next day we stopped at this famous pancake house and had the most amazing creation ever, pancakes the size of our plate made with apples and pears covered in powdered sugar, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream and nuts, DELICIOUS! Afterwards we walked off our food-coma window shoppings and getting lost in the cute canal street neighborhoods, then we visited a couple museums of their world famous museums including the Rijksmuseum where we saw a real cast of a human skull with the skulls real teeth and everything, it was encrusted in 8, 601 diamonds by Damien Hirst. Craziest thing ive ever seen. Then we ventured to the Van Gogh museum which was the most interesting to see originals of some of the most famous art work in the world. Unfortunately the rest of the day it poured and we had to find a coffee shop to hide out in, listening to great jam music, had a couple drinks and made some friends with some fellow travelers, where we spent the night exchanging stories and laughs. Amsterdam was a very beautiful city, however I’d say that it had 2 faces, during the day it was so quaint, old-fashioned, reminded me of Princeton New Jersey, with the multicolored trees and autumn feel to it, but at night it gets very quite around the city and most things are only open near the Red Light District, so it can get pretty creepy at times, with the free-spirited hippies smoking and prostitution area, we choose to hang out in some sports cafes.

---