WATCH OUT FOR THAT….bike.
Amsterdam, the city of bikes, took more than a skip, hop and a jump to get to! We took an early bus in London to the station, then another bus to the airport, flew to Eindhoven (southern Netherlands) and a train to Amsterdam. But it wasn’t quite as smooth as planned since we are illiterate when it comes to Dutch and our train broke down halfway to the city. The trains were packed going into Amsterdam because it was Queen’s Day weekend. It was quite a task to say the least, especially since public transportation closes within the city for the day. Queen’s Day, April 30, is a Holland celebration of the former queen’s birthday, but the present queen celebrates her birthday on this day as well. The celebration is wild! Everyone in Holland wears orange and hangs out in the street.
I’ve literally never seen so many people in the streets before. Everywhere you went there were bands on stage, music in the air, parties on boats in the canals and people having a blast! Since it is a national holiday and all the museums were closed, we simply joined the fun! Jenna and I simply took in the culture. I didn’t really have an idea of what Amsterdam was like till I got there, but it’s such a beautiful city. It’s full of canals, cool facades and tulips, but it’s not as easy to navigate most cities. More than once, we found ourselves sitting on a bench on a street corner trying to figure out where we were and which direction we wanted to go. One harmless, local old man who was hammered out of his mind voluntarily pointed out where we were on the map and was completely wrong. We found it entertaining that he “knew exactly where we were.” Queens Day was a huge success and left me wondering why we don’t celebrate President’s Day like that! Saturday was our day to tour the city! Though we wanted to rent bikes, we thought it probably wasn’t the best idea in the rain. Instead we got some coffee from a coffeeshop to put some pep in our early morning step then went to the Anne Frank house, which was such an amazing experience. Anne Frank was a young girl whose family hid above her father’s business during the Holocaust because they were Jews. Anne Frank’s diary survived the war and is shares an incredible insight to life as a Jew during the war. It was moving to see where her family lived and what it was like. The original artwork and magazine cutouts that were on Anne’s walls are still there today. If you ever go to Amsterdam, I absolutely recommend going to the Anne Frank house. We also visited the Van Gogh Museum, which has lots of his work and that of influential artists in his life. I’ve seen his art all my life and heard his name, but I never put two and two together until I visited the museum. Van Gogh is truly an amazing artist. It’s surreal to me to see the original pieces of art that I have seen copied prints of my whole life. I don’t think I will ever look at copies the same not only for Van Gogh but also artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
The rest of the day we just romped around the city and explored what it had to offer. I will say that it is definitely the most interesting city I have been to during my adventure in Europe. Their Red Light District is unlike anything I ever knew existed; however, I will say that as terrible as it is, it wasn’t as dirty as I expected. I don’t know how to describe, but if you’re intrigued it’s just a place to see rather than stay. One thing that was very interesting to me was “store front houses.” As you walked down the seidwalks, you could see into people’s homes at street level. It was so bizarre to me that so many people left their drapes open for the world to see in. Overall, Amsterdam is a really cool place, but I was disappointed by their lack of wooden clogs. Clogs were everywhere, but there were no wooden ones for sale anywhere. The amount of bikes in the city though is unreal! There are bikes lining the streets. They have their own lanes on every road, and the city is so accomodatiing.
I loved it, except when I literally almost died because I was in the bike lane like a tourist and saw my life flash before my eyes as a bike whizzed by not centimeters from my body. I left Sunday ready for home. As I took the train ride back to Eindhoven, I enjoyed watching the Netherland countryside speed past me with flocks of sheep grazing in the rain. The windmills in the distance made the landscape that much more beautiful! It’s the only landscape I’ve ever seen that a man-made contribution added to it rather than took away from it. I slept all the way home exhausted from a week of fun, but I was glad to touch down in Italy. I missed it while I was gone and I’m really going to miss it when I leave for good.I’m in the middle of exams now, but I thought this was a nice study break. Though my time in Florence is almost over, I still have Paris and Morocco to go!
LOVE YOU ALL!
Countdown till home: 9 days!
No comments:
Post a Comment