Advertisement
Published: September 30th 2008
Greetings from Sweden! Last weekend I met Kai in Amsterdam for three nights and we had a blast! I left Vaxjo at 9:30am Thursday morning, catching the bus to the train station. I caught a train to Copenhagen which took 2 1/2 hours. It was really foggy that morning but luckily the fog lifted by the time I flew out. I got a window seat on a "City-Hopper", its a plane seating 50 people that fly short distances in Europe. The view from the plane was amazing as we left Copenhagen. I saw the long bridge that connects Malmo, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark and discovered that it disappears under water for a few kilometers. I also saw two sets of wind turbines in the water. The first is in a row of about ten and the second is a box shaped layout of thirty or more turbines. It was really cool to see because they were so huge and I never knew they could be in water. I saw dozens more spread throughout the Danish countryside. I saw a lot of ocean coast through the window on the remainder of the flight and it was beautiful. I met Kai at the
Shipol Airport in Amsterdam and we took a train to Central Station. Kai had been there before so he navigated us out of this enormous place. When we walked outside, I remember seeing hundreds, even thousands of bikes all at one time parked on a platform. Amsterdam is really crowded! We were constantly watching for people, bikers, cars, trams, and mopeds. I forgot to write down directions to our hostel so we roamed around looking for it for about a half hour. We finally found it and got settled. Then we decided to walk around for a while and explore. All of the streets are Dutch names. We stayed on Warmoesstraat which intersects with Dudezijds Armsteeg, Lange Niezel, and Sint Jansstraat! I had no idea where I was going the whole weekend. I could only remember a street name long enough to try to pronounce it. There are a lot of canals in Amsterdam, as it is very low to the ocean. The canal water isn't very clean, but to my surprise we saw a swan swimming around the first night! We walked a lot in Amsterdam... there were so many places to see and each turn we took there
was a new street with busy people and businesses. We stopped at a few bars and coffee shops along the way. Our favorite coffee shop was Dampring, where Oceans 12 had a scene or two Kai tells me. We also went to Vondel Park, its huge! It's very long and narrow like Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and we walked pretty far into it until we got hungry. There are so many restaurants to choose from in the city we had a hard time finding a grocery store. But we were eventually successful and picked up some bread and yogurt. On Friday night, we ventured into the infamous Red Light District. If you have not heard, the red lights frame a glass window where prostitutes wait for business. This is completely legal and there is even a prostitute union, The Red Thread. There are no prostitutes on the street; they all remain in their respective glass cases. This was pretty shocking to me, but I felt very safe and comfortable in this area of town because there were so many tourists like me. The red lights are certainly not the most shocking thing I saw in this area, but
I won't get into that here. I didn't take any pictures in this area because I did not want to disrespect any locals or get my camera stolen, so I left it at the hotel. Oh boy was our hotel old. The steep three stories up to our room was a haul with luggage. The room had a TV, our own bathroom, and a nice view. It even came with a MOUSE! Ahh! I was sitting on the bed Saturday night changing my shoes when I look over and see a mouse in the corner of the room! He was hiding behind the trash can. So Kai shooed him away by putting the trash can out in the hallway and eventually the little guy ran out the door. I was surprisingly calm, but I'm glad Kai took care of it! We ate a lot of delicious food over the weekend. We had shoarmas one night, its a Middle-Eastern, inexpensive meal of meat and pita bread with sauces. We also had another Middle Eastern dish of what I think was lamb and pork, but I couldn't be 100% sure. Nevertheless, it was delicious. We had Italian pizzas for lunch one day
and nachos and cheese one night at the pub. The city reminded me a lot of New York City with all the people and things to do. There were people out all night and day like in the Big Apple. There were lots of shops, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops especially. We only drank Heineken while we were there, since it is the staple of Amsterdam beer. We tried to go to the brewery/museum but it was closed for the day. We only went to one museum, the Rijksmuseum. It looks huge from the outside but we were disappointed in how small it was on the inside. This might have been do to renovations that have been going on for a few years. We got to see Nightwatch by Rembrandt and some other great paintings by him and other Dutch artists. On Sunday, we were cutting it close to make our flights out of Amsterdam. We couldn't print our boarding passes from the kiosk so we had to stand in a really long line that set us back. We found out we couldn't print our passes because Kai's flight was delayed (thank God or he would've missed it) and my
plane was overbooked so I was temporarily on stand-by until they got a seat. So in the end it all worked out and I made it home according to plan. I suggest everyone go to Amsterdam at some point, but I can honestly say three nights was enough. I was ready to go home to Sweden on Sunday, and it feels good to think of Sweden as home now. If you are interested in reading Kai's blog he also has entries on this website and you can search for them under Kai Goellner. Have a great day and I hope you enjoyed reading about my journey. Love Em
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.025s; cc: 15; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0431s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Jetset
non-member comment
Amsterdam
looks great! I just got back from Amsterdam. Did you check out the gay pride parade? Pretty crazy. http://www.jetsetway.com/entries/amsterdam-gay-pride-day