Week Six

Hallo! (Dutch for "Hello")

This week was definitely a good one! Thursday night we left for Amsterdam and stayed until Sunday, although I could have stayed longer. It took 13 hours to get there - we took a bus to Dover, then the bus got on a ferry to Calle (France) and then drove on the bus again. We got to Amsterdam at about noon, but didn't get checked into our hostel until 2:30 or so. For a moment we thought we would need to go to another hostel, which would not have been good because most of our group got into the first hostel and only 8 of us were left. Yet in the end it all worked out and we were in the same hostel. I was in a room of 8 people; 4 sets of bunk beds and one bathroom. It could have been worse. The hostel was clean and fine by me. The only thing that made me uncomfortable with the hostel was their advertising strategy. They had posters around the hostel of people "before" and "after" a stay at their hostel. The "after" picture featured a person that had just gotten beaten up with black eyes and cuts on their face. Their website has the same idea: http://www.hans-brinker.com/  For some reason they think this is attractive? Sarcasm, I suppose? Not sure. I guess Dutch humor is wasted on me. They also filled every inch of the lobby area, elevators and bar with graffiti. Again, not my taste, but what can you do. I didn't get any pictures of the hostel but I looked some up online and posted them on my album so you can see what it looked like for the most part.

On to the good stuff! Our first day in Amsterdam was more of a half day (do to the unorganized check in process) but we made the most of it. We split into a few groups and in my group was Dawn, Morgan, Stephanie and myself. We ate lunch at a super cute corner sandwich shop where we were happy to find out that the menus are in English and most people generally know very good English. When leaving the restaurant (which feels weird calling it that since it had about 3 tables), we were saying bye and thank you to the waitress/bartender and a couple of older women did the same back to us. It was adorable! It was two women about 60-65 drinking glasses of wine (at 2 pm) saying "Goodbye! Goodbye!" as we walked out. Immediately I loved Amsterdam.

The next thing we did after eating was we went to the Heineken Brewery. It was in walking distance - everything is in Amsterdam. Everything is a 15 minute walk away, which is so unlike the other places we've been (ex: London, where a 15 minute tube ride is standard). The Brewery was a lot of fun. I had never been through a tour of a brewery before so I really didn't know what to expect. It was fun, informative and interesting. We learned about the "smiling E's" on the label: how they are strategically tilted for a bit of an extra appeal. We did a taste test halfway through the tour, which was probably a half of a pint, maybe less. Then at the end we traded in the buttons on our wristband for pints. The whole tour lasted about 3 hours, which didn't leave us with much time left in the day.

We decided it was just enough time to stop by the Vincent Van Gogh Museum. It was three floors but didn't hold as much as I expected. Starry Night is in NYC (which is a total bummer) but his self portrait, Almond Blossom and the Sunflowers were all there. I had never seen the Sunflowers before but loved them. The Almond Blossom painting is actually the background on my iPod and has been for about a year so it was very neat to see the authentic painting in front of me. There was also some other artwork from various artists, who I didn't recognize. There was one poster that is really famous that was there and I'll post that to my album, and I know you'll all recognize it. I remember my friend's mom had it hanging in their house when we were younger, so when I saw it I was just overwhelmed with feelings of home and childhood. Again, a very neat experience to be standing in front of something that means a lot to you.

The next day we got up bright and early to go to the Anne Frank House/Museum, which was a wonderful decision because we didn't have to wait in line, but when we walked out the line was wrapped around the block. It was the house they stayed in while hiding during the war, and is now a museum. Surprisingly, I have never read The Diary of Anne Frank so I knew very minimal about her specific situation. Yet that made no difference to my experience, because there was information everywhere. I was, along with everyone else, so emotional during the tour but so glad I went. I think the museum was done very nicely, respectfully and wasn't overly depressing. We were all nervous that we would be in a terrible mood afterwards, but we were fine. We weren't allowed to take pictures in it, but Stephanie shot a few and I put them in my album. At the end of the tour, I bought the book and plan on reading it very soon. That purchase was honestly one that I am most excited about.

After the Anne Frank House, we went through a market nearby. It was so cute and I got a few pictures of some of the different stands and vendors. The market was on Lindengracht, which is a good representation of some of the street names in Amsterdam. We walked down Lijbaansgracht, Prinsengracht, Damrak and Stoudhouderskade... Yet usually referring to each of them as "that one" while pointing to the map. Interestingly enough, I had a map that my mom sent me a few days before we left. It was given to her at a family party from a family member, my cousin Jennie, who moved to The Netherlands about 7 years ago. She cam home for a party and gave everyone maps of Amsterdam - little did she know I would get such use out of it! The next thing we did was actually meet up with my cousin, Jennie and her family. I met her, her husband and two kids at a restaurant and we went out to eat, while my friends went somewhere else to eat close by. I believe the place we went to was called De Beli and it was a nice sandwich place in the area of Leidseplein. The menu was in Dutch so Jennie read the menu to me, and we sat, ate and talked for about 2 hours. It had been 3 years since I had seen them, and her second son hadn't even been born then. I wasn't sure if meeting up was going to actually work out (due to my weird phone that only chooses to receive certain calls) but I'm so happy it did work out. It was really great seeing them, and nice to see family for the first time in a while.

Once I met back up with my friends, we went on a canal ride from the Southern part of Amsterdam to the Northern part. It took about 30 minutes and was a really great way to see the city. We got one picture of us on the ride, but it wasn't on my camera so when they put it up, I'll upload it.

After the canal ride, we walked around the city for a bit more. We stopped to get french fries and mayo, which is very popular in The Netherlands. The place we stopped at was run by one older man, who was so nice and let us try several of the different sauces and dips (they had about 30 to choose from). He gave us the fries in a wax paper cone and poured the sauce all over the top. Sooo delicious. We walked around enjoying our fries for a while and eventually ran into the city centre, that has a huge statue in the middle. Its nickname is the "Phallic City Centre" and you'll see why when you see the pictures! While we were there, some people asked us for directions - I guess we fit in and appeared as locals! Or at least tourists who knew what they were doing.

Once we realized we were running out of time, we hopped onto the nearest tram to take us back to our hostel. We were told it was about €2.60 ($3.60) for a ride on the tram but we needed to get back to the hostel, so we hopped on. We assumed it would be like the bus back home (or even in Leicester) where we get on and can buy a ticket from the bus driver, but when we got on, the doors didn't open by the driver. They opened more toward the middle of the bus so we just sat down. We looked around for what other people were doing and saw that no one noticed us and no one was going up to the driver. It looked like you needed to swipe your card to exit the tram, so we had a mini panic attack, until we realized we were totally wrong and just hopped out behind some other people. Free tram ride success! I have no idea what we were supposed to do, but it doesn't matter now and we each saved €2.60 :)

Our plan was to attend a barcrawl in the Red Light District once we got back to the hostel, but we were way too exhausted from the day that a few of us decided to skip out on it. So, unfortunately I am reporting that I went to Amsterdam but never went into the Red Light District. Yet after hearing about it, I think I'm okay with that. The thing that's "special" about the Red Light District is that prostitution is legal: along with peep shows, strip shows, and sex shows. None of those things appeal to me, so no harm done. Everyone said the barcrawl was terrible, too. I guess about 150 people started it, and only about 30 people went through the whole thing. The bars were empty, played strange music and expensive (so I'm told). Another reason I was happy I didn't go to the Red Light District was I know the whole set-up of everything would make me seriously uncomfortable. I guess how it's set up is that the prostitutes are in buildings, dancing or what have you, behind glass. There is a red light on them (hence the name "Red Light District") designating that this woman is a prostitute (rumor has it that there are blues lights on some women, which mean that the "woman" isn't actually a woman...) It's considered EXTREMELY offensive to take pictures of any of these women, but if you do, they will open some sort of window and throw a cup of urine at you. Where ever there is any sort of realistic possibility of urine being thrown at me - I no longer have a desire to be there. What if the idiot next to you takes a picture?!? Oh no. Not for me. Nooo sir. I think I made a wise decision. A few friends and I just stayed in the hostel and hung out. We got pizza at some place down the road, where the waiter was really rude but the pizza was delicious.

The next morning, Dawn, Stephanie and I got up early to take pictures next to the I AMsterdam statue (if you could even call it that). I was really happy we got to get that in at the last minute. We got a ton of pictures with it - I got a picture with every letter and a few with the whole thing. I took two panoramic pictures of it and I messed one up quite terribly, but I find it funny so hopefully you can laugh at it as well. Right from there we went to the bus, which took us back to Leicester the same way we got to Amsterdam: 13 hours split between bus, ferry, bus. All in all, I had a wonderful time in Amsterdam and would definitely go back again (and I know you've been wondering this whole time... YES pot is legal. People do NOT smoke it on the street contrary to popular belief. Only in coffee shops.)

Pictures: MobileMe

- Lauren