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Amsterdam

As my first weekend trip out of France: a road trip to Amsterdam. What a wonderful city!

In order to maximize the time spent in Amster-dizzle (as we called it while travelling), I, along with 4 other coworkers, left home right after work on Wednesday evening. The drive from Arras to Amsterdam is about 3 hours and a half. Riding in our cozy standard car, we drove through 3 countries: France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

We arrived thanks to the trusty Tom Tom GPS and found a Park and Ride to leave the car. As it was evening, we had to hurry to find the trams before they stopped running at midnight. With a bit of guessing and a lot of luck, we got on the right tram within minutes and made it to the Centraal Station (Dutch, not a typo!) where the whole population seemed to have forgotten the late hour.

Our hostel, "Durty Nelly's" was not dirty at all! Very nice management, we got to our room up a few winding staircases and got ready for bed. In the room, a total of 10 beds (mostly filled with Americans), a toilet, shower, sink and lockers. The nightlife was still very much alive until about 4h30 am, but despite this, we all got a good night's sleep - the mattresses in the hostel are way more comfy than our house beds...

On Thursday morning, we got breakfast at the hostel (three cheers for normal coffee!) and started off towards the Rijks and the van Gogh museums. On the way we met an exchange student from Singapore who was nice enough to guide us through the city with his iPhone's GPS. Three of us went to the Rijks, while the others explored van Gogh.

Afterwards we took lots of the pictures by the "iamsterdam" structure and walked through town looking for a late lunch. The afternoon was spent walking through the wonderful town, doing some shopping and enjoying the wonderful weather - apparently the only nice days in weeks!

Explored the bar scene that evening, ending up in an Australian karaoke bar. You really can find everything in Amsterdam!

Friday morning, we had breakfast at the hostel again and were off for a walking tour of the town, covering about 400 years of history in 2 hours. The tour ended at Anne Frank's house and so that became the next stop for us. Very crowded, but still a very interesting (for lack of a better word) exhibit of the different rooms with short passages from Anne's diary.

A bit more shopping and grabbing a supper for the road, and then back to the hostel to get our bags. We took the tram back to the park and ride and braved a bit of European traffic on the way back.

Got home safely (though with a cold) late Friday night. I will definitely be going back to Amsterdam at some point. The calm atmosphere of the town is indescribable.

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Photos

Travel buddies
Sam, Steph, John and I (+ Chantal, who is not in this picture)

The Canals
Notice how many bikes? In Amsterdam, bikes have priority over everyone - including pedestrians!