Amsterdam

The next morning I got to Schiphol Airport in search of Stefan. After stressing around trying to find a payphone that took cash or card (because they ONLY take a specific phone card made for payphones...lame), I finally caved and bought a card for five Euro. As I was trying to figure out how to make the phone work, Stefan walked out of baggage claim and found me instead.

For me, it was a really happy reunion - two weeks seems like a pretty long time, though I realize it's not so terrible. Still, it was good to see the person who reminds me the absolute most of Denmark - the place I'd been missing so much.

We happily made our way out of the Schiphol (which sounds like...Sk(roll tongue)eeee-pole...Dutch is REALLY complicated) Airport, and onto the subway to get to central station. When we walked up out into the city center of Amsterdam, chaos seemed to ensue. A man fell up the escalator, slurring wildly while a friend attempted to help him stand. On the second set of escalators, he fell again, creating a scene and flailing crazily. Slightly overwhelmed, we stepped out into the fresh air. Suddenly, right in front of us, two bikes collided head-on...Yikes. We swerved around them, as they got up from the ground, saying things aggressively in Dutch to each other. Ah. We walked on, laughing shakily, but not long after, we were pushed to the sidewalk, as two bike-cops zoomed by us, dinging their bike-bells urgently. Welcome to Amsterdam, right? Almost as warm a welcome as Wonderful Copenhagen. Anyway, despite the intensity of our first few minutes, the city was absolutely gorgeous. Filled with beautiful architecture, canals, and interesting people everywhere:


From Central Station, we made our way to our hostel, which we had all good reviews for, despite the fact that it was far, far from the middle of town. We took a train for something like 11 stops (and all the while, wondering how the train systems in Holland work), then got off at a station called Holendrecht that was way out in the middle of nowhere. That ride took around 25 minutes. Then we waited for the shuttle that would take us to our hostel, Lucky Lake. It comes every hour, so we didn't have very long to wait. This shuttle is a 17 minute ride from the place, so it DID take a while to get into town. I think it was worth it, because it was an absolutely beautiful little place. While it was frustrating, I really appreciated it, because I was so sick of city noise. At night it was nice and quiet, just the way I'm used to. The hostel was comprised of little cabins and caravans (a nice word for teeny little mobile homes), but luckily we got a cabin - a bright pink one:

Behind is the lounge where we hung out with a couple from Spain for a few nights. The hammocks were really cozy when the weather was nice - the entire hostel was really wonderful.


It was just a short (and nice) wander down to the water, and the scenery was absolutely lovely. The waterfront was a little park, but there were docks where people lived canal-side (I guess?) all over the place. It was so picturesque - someday I'll remember to thank Stefan for taking so many a pictures - really, you should too, because this will be a much more photo-packed entry than I'm sure you're used to from me. The weather was alright for some of our stay, like the days where we decided it would be fun to explore the surrounding area:

Out on a little teeny fence in the middle of the water being an idiot:
We found a friendly kitty on our walk! Hooray! My face is absolutely ridiculous here.
Some of the cute little canals with houses directly on them - so adorable.
I think this is right around sunset - such a romantically cozy little place for our hostel to be!Anyway, that's basically our hostel. The next couple days, we explored the city center, checked out the Red Light District (awkward...especially because we kept getting lost there), walked across the city (so around 4 miles? away from Central Station?), and went to the Heineken Experience - biggest waste of money on the trip. I guess entertaining, though, but only because we had someone to make fun of it with. Like Guinness in Ireland, people say that Heineken is better in Amsterdam - not so true. I think it's disgusting everywhere. So I'm really glad that we got three ''free'' glasses of it on our tour. Really lame - and ridiculous that we had to pay 20 Euro for it. Oh well.

In Amsterdam, Stefan and I had the bad habit of getting lost in the same areas over and over again. We really did end up in the Red Light District pretty often, but this is another place that we kept passing:
Read on the top of the building - for the longest time, we were convinced that it was trying to say "God robs you...Jesus Loves you." We finally asked the owner of a little shop, and she told us that it it actually says, "God helps you. Jesus loves you." We weren't quite sure why it was half in Dutch and half in English, and we never found out. Interesting building though, and a very Amsterdam-y look. This isn't necessarily the beautiful architecture that I'm talking about, but it's a different style than in the States. This type of building reminds me of a lot of European buildings, actually. On second thought, though, I say that it doesn't really remind me of the states, but really, it might remind me a little of something you'd see in Burlington. Either way, I like the style.

One of the more memorable trips we took was to Keukenhof - the world's largest flower gardens. It's not really in Amsterdam, so we spent a day there, but unfortunately, this was one of the days with terrible weather - as you'll see in some of the pictures, we may look a little wet:

Really, it was an absolutely gorgeous place - it was really too bad it was raining. It made out of our pictures come out kind of bad, so these are the best ones I have. The gardens were really pretty, and at this time of year, everything is starting to bloom. Fun place to wander around, and it really shows a different side of Holland - Amsterdam is a place where the atmosphere will change on you so fast - one minute you'll be in a really cool and relaxed environment, and all of the sudden, things will shift into some high techno beats with upbeat energy that you can't help but want to dance around. Just one second later you'll be in a nice Italian restaurant where you feel like Venice is right outside, and then again, you're standing in the center of a world of people in a red-eyed haze. Pretty cool to see the changes so fast, but then, out in the country, you see the real Holland - beautiful flowers, peaceful people, with the gorgeous nature every place you look. Personally, I loved Amsterdam - the city was comfortable and clean, much like Denmark. It may not be a place to LIVE, but to visit, it's definitely a lot of fun. Next time, I might want to stay in a hostel a little closer to city center, but I would say this trip was definitely a success. Good company, and lots of fun adventures. In fact, we loved Amsterdam so much, that we booked our hostel there for another night and ended up staying for four nights total. We were trying to catch up with some good weather, but unfortunately, it was only there for the first two days. On our last day, we caught an expensive train to Hamburg at 5pm, and started our slow path back north towards Denmark.