A Weekend in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is only a 40 minute plane ride from Bremen, so a couple of my girlfriends and I decided to go for the weekend! For just about a 48 hour trip, we did A LOT. Our plane left at 10:30am on Friday morning and we landed in Amsterdam around 11:15. We quickly navigated the bus system from the airport and found the bud headed towards the main city center.

This "I amsterdam" is one of three around the city. This one is located in front of the airport. The other two apparently get moved around and pop up in new places all the time!

When we arrived at the city center, our next step was to locate our hostel. We got a little bit turned around, but eventually we found the street we needed. The hostel we stayed in was actually a Christian hostel. It was very clean and the people who worked there (most of whom were our age or younger!) were incredibly friendly (and religious). It was overall a very good hostel and quite clean. I was even able to buy tickets for museums right from the front desk, which helped to avoid the loooong lines that form rather quickly.

After we locked up our belongings in the hostel, we were starving. We found a Doner kebab restaurant which had massive sandwiches and drinks for about 7 euros or under:

Clearly, we decided to eat there. The food was really good, but a bit too much! I couldn't finish all of that.

As my friends and I walked around the city some more, we came across a number of really cute Dutch food shops and souvenir stores. We were all surprised about how much English is spoken in Amsterdam. Even the Dutch sometimes speak English to each other! It's funny- I'm not used to everyone understanding English, so my initial reaction was to first speak in German. I was always met with a few blank stares. There were also so many Americans there. I heard American accents on every corner. Regardless, the Dutch shops were quaint and all the food was fresh and delicious:

 

OH! How could I have forgotten? Amsterdam has TONS of canals. They are all gorgeous. The buildings lining the streets are also pretty. The houses are narrow because in the olden days, only so much square footage was allotted per property location. To make more floors, the staircases had to be made very, very narrow (they were almost vertical!!)- a drunk person's worst nightmare essentially. The houses also tilt sideways because the foundation is built on sand and other unstable terrain. Finally, many houses also lean forward in order to hook larger belongings (such as pianos) to the roof to be pulled upwards through windows so as not to damage the outer walls of the house.

 

We were lucky to have some spots of sunshine because for the most part the weather was pretty awful- lots of rain showers. We had a scheduled boat around 7:15 pm, so we decided to go back to the hostel for a bit and get our room settled. Afterwards, we headed to the Red Light District, as it was on the way to where our boat tour would begin! It was interesting to say the least, but an experience that's for sure :) We had a good time overall in that part of town. And some pretty great laughs. For instance, a Catholic Church and a kindergarten are located right in the heart of the RLD. We learned that parents and teachers tell the children that the reasons why the girls in the windows are in "bikinis" is because they are waiting for their boyfriends to pick them up to take them to the beach! Also, the Dutch men there don't hold back with their lewd comments towards passers-by ;)

 

Entering the RLD..........................Coming out of the RLD

By this point we were all still pretty full from the massive Turkish Doner Kebabs we had earlier, but we stopped into a bakery for some pastries (like actual pastries kids could have too). We had a bit of time before the boat tour began, and we wanted to get out of the rain for a little while.

                                                    YUM <3

We also popped into a couple of souvenir stores and did some shopping along the way.  The main market square is quite beautiful with its churches and palace.

Our boat tour meeting location for the Boom Chicago company was located in the back of a bar, so we hung out for a bit for the rest of our tour group to arrive (it had stopped raining too). It was a cool place. Some of the Dutch performers were putting on a comedy show about the American election, and we were told that the 11:30 pm performance would be performed completely through improvisation with all the actors drunk. It sounded like fun, but we still had more to do that night and wanted to see how tired we'd be...Here are some pictures from the boat tour:

I learned all about the history of Amsterdam on the tour, and got to see some of the major buildings I didn't get to see during the day, such as the Mayor's House and the Mint Tower (Munttoren). It was very enlightening and certainly one of the highlights of my trip there. The city is absolutely stunning at night, and all the bridges are lit up. The canal sparkles and you can see the reflections of the narrow houses in the water.

So of course, after such a nice historical tour, why not stumble upon a Museum of Torture?! =D

                                             Yup, this was it! And in a sketchy area too....

It was a medieval museum filled with torture devices. It had descriptions about each torture device next to the structure, as well as some pretty gruesome pictures on the fall. Overall very cool. And the lights inside the museum were like a neon red and blue....

 

Again, I'm a psychology major, so all of the information about torture and the psychological/societal reasons behind it are fascinating to me.

It was getting late and it was now very dark outside. We were EXHAUSTED, so me made the long trek back to our hostel. We relaxed for a little while and met our new roommate from South Korea, and then we all fell asleep.

The next morning my friend Katie and I woke up early because we wanted to get on line for the Anne Frank House before it opened. Fortunately it was not raining very much that morning, because we had to stand on line for a little while.

                                            Located in front of the Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House is where Anne went into hiding with her family for over 2 years during the Nazi occupation. She hid with her parents, sister, and another family, as well as a family friend, in the Secret Annex above a warehouse for a jam company with which her father was associated. Everything in the house was in excellent condition. I highly recommend a visit to the house. I was able to go through the warehouse rooms, past the secret bookshelf, and upstairs into the Annex. I even got to go inside Anne's room, which was still decorated with the cheerful pictures she had pasted onto her bedroom walls during her time there. Of course, out of respect, no photography was allowed. It was a very touching experience being there, and also quite sad. I am very happy that I went. Her diary is one of my favorite works of non-fiction.

After the Anne Frank House, Katie and I met up with Fiona and headed to the Van Gogh museum. The original museum was closed for renovations, so all of the artwork was moved to an even larger museum, the Hermitage Museum.

Although the museum was very, VERY crowded, I saw all of Van Gogh's most famous works and learned a lot about him as an artist. Again, no photography was allowed. He went through a number of different phases in his artistic career, spanning from simple sketches, to studying flowers, peasants, Japanese art, the simple beauty of nature, and of course, portraits. I also was able to see some other Impressionist artists' works too, such as Monet and Renoir.

After the Van Gogh museum, we went to a tiny Italian restaurant. We were getting tired and the weather was pretty awful by this point- I was wearing a rain coat and my sweatshirt underneath still got soaked! Katie wanted to check out another museum, so she went off and did that while Fiona and I found our favorite bakery again and enjoyed hot drinks and cake while writing postcards. A few hours later, we all met up at the hostel. Exhausted. And drenched.

I saw and did more than I had initially anticipated. I had such a wonderful weekend and I would love to return to Amsterdam again one day. It really is a beautiful, charming city. There is still so much I didn't get to see (like the zoo and the other famous museums!) so a trip back is certainly on the agenda for the future.

Safe to say, I'm still pretty tired. We got to the airport at 5:45 am Sunday morning.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat :)