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Published: February 22nd 2009
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Amsterdam10
Amsterdam is full of canals and bikes I think I may have had a little too much fun with Amsterdam's tourism slogan, 'I Amsterdam'
I think by the time we got to Amsterdam, we had finally mastered the art of travelling, but are fully ready to go back to London.
We kind of did a bad job of booking flights though because flying to Amsterdam, we had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning in Prague to catch our flight. We unfortunately realized this at about 11pm and by the time we had finished up everything we got pretty much no sleep. When we got into Amsterdam we found some food (Turkish pizza.. yummm) and crashed.
Friday we were so productive, we went to 3 museums in 1 day! We started with the Anne Frank House which was really cool. There’s an extension off of the house where the annex was and you can go into all of the rooms and there’s video footage of friends of theirs and some of the people who helped them and Otto Frank. Very emotional, but a very
good place! There's so many places that I've now been to that just are unbelieveable to think that I have been in the same rooms as so many great people through history and this was one of them. Also, I got to see the actually diary, which is of course under glass.
Then we got some lunch and headed to the Diamond Museum, which wasn’t amazing, but since Amsterdam is the city of diamonds, we figured we’d better go. After this was the Van Gogh museum. That was really cool because it was the opening night of their exhibition of a lot of his night pieces and a lot of what inspired him and other artists, poets, astronomers, etc. It was really cool to say that my own eyes have seen the works of not only Van Gogh, but also Monet, Degas, Renoir and more. It’s an interesting experience to because on the one hand you are in such incredible awe of what is before your eyes and trying to soak up every stroke of each painting but on the other hand, you can’t stand in front of each piece forever and you know you only have so much
time with each piece. And noticing in the prints being sold in the gift shop, just like they always say, it’s so much better in person than it will ever be on a print. It’s almost sad looking at the print because you can’t see the dimension of each stroke and brilliance of each color. I'd almost rather look at it again in my memory as opposed to a print.
On a lesser note, today we did a lot of wandering. We first went to an area called Negen Straatjes which is the Nine Little Streets. It’s a bunch of alleyways of shops straddling three canals. It was really cool, ending with a wonderful afternoon snack of Amsterdam pancakes. They will serve you pancakes here with you name it on them. Meghan and I stuck to the banana pancakes with chocolate and whipped cream, but Whitney was a little more daring with spinach and goat cheese! It sounds distgusting, but the actual pancakes were more flavorless than pancakes you are thinking of. They are more like a fried bread thing, so it really does taste amazing, whatever you put on it.
After lunch/snack time we went to the
red light district. We figured it was a must being in Amsterdam. Let’s just say, my eyes have seen many things in this city. From Van Gogh portraits to live models staring at me from shop windows. Don’t worry mom, I went during the day and it was very safe.
Well now that my first European trip is done, I think I am ready to go back to London. I miss the familiarity of it.. I miss my easily attainable/cheap meals. Namely Tesco Cajun chicken wrap with BBQ chips, mango and juice. Mmm.. can’t wait. I’m excited for when I go home to bring all the fun European food ideas back, but still be able to get my American food that I’ll always love. Also, I will never take the fact that Wal-Mart is open 24/7 and the fact that I have a car to drive there anytime I want for granted!
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