Advertisement
Published: June 13th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Amsterdam
Julie J Vanover I arrived in Amsterdam and I needed to find my hostel quickly so that I could get settled in and make it to the Free Tour of Amsterdam. The only problem was that there were no written directions on the website, only a map. So I used the little map that I had in my book and what I could remember from the web. Well, somewhere I turned the wrong way and the 10 minute walk from the train station turned into over an hour walk. I rushed to the meeting point for the free tour and passed them on the sidewalk so I just joined in the line! Yeah!
I really enjoyed the free tour, we went into the history of the area starting from it's first settlement and the building of dikes and dams. We learned about how successful the people were with trading and all kinds of other things. The Dutch were very resourceful people! One couldn't help from being impressed. We also went through the Red Light District, saw the Narrowest House and the Anne Frank House. I just really loved hearing about the history of the people and how accepting and ingenious they are.
As we were standing outside of one of the most famous coffeeshops in Amsterdam I looked in to see Andy, the guy that I went around Budapest with and his girlfriend sitting in the coffeeshop. Wow!!! Small world backpacking encounters strikes again.
After the tour I went back to my hostel which was in the Red Light District, but I didn't realize how in the Red Light District it was until I opened the curtains to read my guide book. As I was bending over into my bag to get out my guidebook a group of Japanese tourists were looking in the window at me. They were looking for a lady of the night, in my window. I really was in the middle of the Red Light District. So I opened the curtains on the edges of the room and listened to a British group discussing about if the girls lived in the rooms when they saw the bunk beds. It was amusing to say the least.
The next day I went through the Anne Frank House which was neat. It went through the history of the Nazi occupation of Germany and then the Netherlands and what made
Otto, Anne's father decide to put the family into hiding. We walked through the whole building and saw the old offices and warehouse and then went though the doorway that was behind the bookcase. This took us to the annex where the Frank's and others hide for two years. On the walls in Anne's old room there were picture up that she had cut out of magazines to decorate. It was a little creepy to imagine this girl living here and knowing that I've read her journal. At the end there was a big video display that talked about different things that have happened throughout the word and asks if it should be allowed. One of them showed the Synagogue that was a block away from my hostel in Berlin being picketed by Neo Nazi's on Saturday. I turned to the lady next to me and said "I stayed a block away from that a few days ago." Then it showed the riots in Copenhagen over the Muhammad cartoon. I turned to the lady next to me and said "I will be there in a few days." As she was leaving she told me to be very careful on the
rest of my travels.
The next day I had to change hostels becuase the one I was staying at was full, so me and everyone from my room and a few extras transfered to another hostel that was quite a ways away from the Red Light District. But it was very close to the Van Gogh Museum. I originally wanted to see the Rijksmuseum, but they are doing major renovations and only have 1/3 of their pieces available to see. And they were still charging full price, I felt if I could only see 1/3 of it then I should only pay 1/3 of the admission. The Van Gogh museum was cool, there weren't as many of his more famous works there which I found a little disappointing. But they did a really good job of showing his paintings and explaining where he was at in his life and painting techniques. It went into his inspirations and desires, what I found most interesting is how he just decided to be a painter and did it, and did it well.
I went to the train station to meet up with Andy (from Budapest) and his girlfriend Ruby and his
friend Jacob from Copenhagen that he had met years before in Southeast Asia where they were both traveling. We all went to dinner and enjoyed a traditional Dutch meal, a huge sausage and potatoes. Then we walked all over checking out different coffee shops and eating alot of baked goods. It was very fun. It had been a week or so since I had gone around with people so it was nice to have someone to ooh and ahh with and take my picture! It was also very cool to meet his girlfriend who wasn't there yet when he was in Budapest.
The next day I took it pretty easy and just walked around taking pictures and spending alot of time typing until my night train left for Copenhagen. I was going to go to the beach, but it took over 2 hours to get checked out of my hostel (which was extremely annoying). So I didn't want to risk missing the train. Oh well, next time. I would have loved to have seen more of the Netherlands.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.235s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0509s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb