Amsterdam

Amsterdam is amazing. For obvious reasons, I am not going to include every single thing I did this past weekend but I'll go through the majority of the activites that took place. This will also be a very long post, because we did A LOT in just a few days.

We had a flight late afternoon on thursday. This was my first time flying ryanair, and it was all smooth except for some turbulence along the way and the annoying advertising they have going on for the entire flight. We flew into Eidenhoven instead of Amsterdam because the flight was a little cheaper, so we had to take a Tram then a train to get into the city, then another tram to the hostel. We checked in and got settled before heading out. The hostel was mildly terrifying. The bedroom was fine, except for the water smelling like a fart (not exaggerating), and the bathroom was gross. It was out of a horror film. But anyway, we went to walk around and find somewhere to eat. We soon figured out our location was awesome. We were in the heart of the nightlife of the city, which is a change from Dublin where we have to walk 30 minutes to get to a bar. The food around us was also a lot cheaper than we are used to. For dinner, we went to an italian place where everything on the menu was 5 euro. The restaurants charge for water which is annoying, but it seemed food was generally less expensive than other cities.

After dinner it was off to a bar with live music. We had a great time listening to the band for a while before hopping to another bar/club type place. The crowd was really chill and fun, and everyone we met was from amsterdam or another part of the netherlands. We are used to meeting a lot of tourists in Dublin when we go out, so it was a nice change of pace. There was also a man sleeping on the couch at this club. He took his shoes off before passing out, which made it even more funny. I don't think he was a local. After dancing for a bit, we discovered the pancake house. Think ihop meets a crepe place meets a disco. It was fabulous. As I'll tell you later, we went back quite a few times. We called it a night after eating and prepared for the next day.

Friday we woke up at a reasonable time, then headed out to get food. we tried to find a certain sandwich place but ended up just getting pastries. We also decided to walk through the red light district. This was an interesting experience, but not really pleasant, especially at noon, during the "day shift". Afterwards, we went on a canal tour of the city. This was pretty cool, since I hadn't really realized how many canals and house boats there were in amsterdam. After the tour, a few of us split off because we had a reservation to go to the Anne Frank house. We had some time to kill, so we went and sat in a really cute cafe for a little bit before we had to be there. After a sandwich and latte, we headed to anne frank. It was a self guided tour, but it was actually bigger and better than i expected. There was a lot to read and look at, and was a very different side of the city than we had seen so far. We headed home to shower and relax after the tour. For dinner we chose a place that had a "tourist deal", most likely made to attract young people staying in hostels. I had an awesome steak, fries, and salad- I usually dont order steak but it was a great deal. After dinner we played cards in the hostel until it was time to go out. The night consisted of some bar hopping and pancake house again. This time I got a pancake all to myself. Here's a picture:

Delicious. It was an early night, but I was tired from the past two days activities.

Saturday morning it was pouring out, which ruined our initial plans of going on a walking tour of the city. We decided to wait it out and go on the later tour instead. In the meantime, we went to the Amsterdam library which had been reccommended to us- it had a great view of the city and a decent cafe for lunch. We then went back to the city center to catch the walking tour. It was a free, 3 hour tour, where the guide relies on tips at the end. Our guide, Jo, was pretty strange. She made a lot of awkward jokes that really weren't funny. I'm pretty sure she knew they weren't funny too, which makes it even worse. Nevertheless, she did a good job taking a huge group of people around. We got to see a lot more of the city this way, despite Jo's weird comments. at the end of the tour it was time to head back to the hostel to change and get ready for the long night ahead of us.

Saturday night was Museum night in Amsterdam. This means if you buy a ticket, you can enter any participating museum in the city for free, and they stay open from 6pm-2am. The trams also ran for free. We figured this would be a great way to go to a bunch of museums, and also save some money because each of them are individually kind of expensive. We went to an italian place for dinner, then headed to Van Gough as our first stop. It was definitely great to go on this night- there was a dj playing, and flashing lights on the walls. There were also a couple people painting a 3d picture on part of the floor. I really enjoyed it, and the van gough was pretty good as well. After van gogh we tried to navigate to a film museum, but ended up getting lost on the way. we finally made it there but it was a bust- just a weird movie in dutch was playing, and in another room there was a freaky projection of a group of girls on the screen singing, but their heads were moving and their eyes were creepy. ( I realize that was a terrible description but it was bizarre). After we left, we stumbled upon the diamon museum. This was also really cool- it included a short movie on how diamonds are discovered, had a diamond skull on display, and a display of the picture the Starry Night with diamonds put onto it in a pattern that made the picture look even more awesome. Outside the museum was one of those huge shoes that Amsterdam is known for. Here's a picture:

After the diamond museum, we set out to try to find the Aquarium. We made a pit stop at the pancake house first, then hopped on a tram. It took us a while to get there, but we got in line for what we thought was the aquarium. Once we entered the building though, after waiting in a long line, we realized we were at the museum of natural life- a kind of zoo type place, and that we were on a Dutch-only tour. We had about 30 minutes to kill before we could get on the tour, so naturally, i got a hot dog and sat on the floor to pass the time. Our number was finally called and we went to meet our guide. What I didn't realize was that the tour would be completely outside. And it was cold. really cold. our guide started speaking in dutch, but was interrupted by a drunk canadian in our group who requested she speak english. In fluent english she said "no, this tour will only be in dutch". About 75% of the group was english speaking only, so it was less foa tour and more of a walk through a zoo in the pitch black. We did get to see some swans, llamas, a zebra before it ran away, and all of a sudden we came upon a couple of elephants. We didn't get to see their faces though- only their butts since they didn't turn to face us at all. womp. It was strange to stop and think it was 1:30am in amsterdam, and I was staring at an elephant ass. After seeing a few more animals, the tour dropped us at the front of the actual aquarium. It can't really be called an aquarium- more like a room with some fishtanks. It was still fun, despite the annoying drunk canadians on our tour who almost got kicked off. After the aquarium, we decided our last stop of the night would be the red light district, since it is a very different experience at night. It was interesting- that's all I'm going to say. It was pretty late by the time we were done, so I caved and got a taxi instead of trying to figure out the confusing bus system and where we were. That concluded our saturday night.

Sunday morning we had to check out by 10am, which was probably good so we had to get up and leave anyway- we still had a couple things we wanted to do and the timing worked out perfectly. First was the I Amsterdam sign that every tourist goes to. We wanted to get a couple pictures, which didnt take long. Here's the group at the sign:

After the sign, we split up because some of us wanted to go to the anne frank house. Those of us who had already been did our own thing. We first went to a small museum about the things that happen in the red light district. It is not blog-appropriate, so I'm going to skip this part. Our final destination was Cafe Luxembourg, which my parents had been bugging me to go to because they have a special dessert called Tarte Tatin. it is a kind of apple crisp- a very thin layer of pie crust with apple filling on top. and it was delicious. picture:




After this we picked up our bags that we had left at the hostel, and caught a bus to the airport. We had a lot of time to kill before the flight, but it left on time. The flight was a bit longer than it had been on the way over, and the landing was terrifying. I really thought we weren't going to land straight- we were wobbling until literally the last second. We made it safe though, and headed back to the lovely blackhall.

That was a long entry, but the weekend was great. The next time I blog probably wont be for over 2 weeks- this weekend we go to Derry and Belfast in northern ireland, then the next day we turn around to go on our eurotrip; rome, florence, munich, prague. crazy!