| My Traveling Journal |
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| My Adventures in Amsterdam, Holland |
| March 1st - 3rd, 2002 |
| -Pot, paintings and prostitutes- Friday after class, Corin and I raced home as fast as we could to pack, because in case you haven't guessed by now, we spent the weekend in Amsterdam! Our school organized the trip, and we went by bus, which was why it was so cheap. It costs 90 euros to buy a one-way train ticket to Amsterdam, but that trip only takes three hours. Our trip cost us 55 euros and included transportation and spending Saturday night in a hostel. What a deal, huh? Corin wore her pajama pants on the bus because we knew it was going to be a long drive- it took 11 hours, which is long but better than the fourteen they told us it was going to be. We headed toward the back of the bus and claimed the five seats going across for ourselves and named it the "Ladies' Lounge" and sprawled out as much as we could while watching a season's worth of Friends episodes and a lesson from our friends Uros and Blaz on how to swear in Slovenian. We arrived in Amsterdam at 6:00 am on Saturday morning and sat on the bus for another hour before the drivers turned the engine off and we were allowed to get down. Oh, it was so cold. Corin, Uros, Blaz and I walked around the city for two hours, trying to find a place where we could sit down and have something hot to drink. I was hoping for something like McDonald's, but they didn't open until 9:00, so we went to some tiny caf� that luckily happened to be open. We were back at McDonald's about an hour later, this time for chicken sandwiches and for the bathrooms, which we later realized we got a good deal on because there wasn't an attendant outside the door so we were able to use them without paying. History lessons: We took a tour of Amsterdam on a cruise through the canals and the Amstel River. We learned that Amsterdam gets its name in part from the river (not the beer), and the many dams in the city. Our first stop on the tour was to visit the house that Anne Frank lived in while she was in hiding with her family and others during World War II. It has been restored and a new entrance was built by Steven Spielberg, with the revenue he earned from making the movie Schindler's List. Walking through the house/museum was a very moving experience. The stairs were so steep and the rooms were very small, especially Anne's, which still has the magazines and newspaper clippings she taped up on the wall. We walked to another part of the museum and saw her diary, a book with a red and white plaid cover, open to a page filled with her own handwriting. Shopping and Dining: We went to H&M, the coolest store in Europe, its like Old Navy in the U.S.! We lost the guys there so we just left and went to Planet Hollywood for dinner, where everything was overpriced and the service was absolutely horrible�maybe that's why they're all going out of business? She found a couple of cool shirts for herself and her sister, and we headed off to the Van Gogh museum after dinner. Sadly, it wasn't as cool as I hoped it would be. We had to pay 13 euros to get into the museum and they did not have some of his most famous works on display, such as Starry Night, my absolute favorite. We felt ripped off, but it was still cool to see his paintings up close- we could see his actual brushstrokes on some paintings! We wanted to walk through the red light district after leaving the Van Gogh museum, but somehow never found it, and we walked through almost the whole city during the day, oh well! Lodging: We stayed at a hostel in the countryside, which was sort of confusing to us, because it was nearly an hour away. Corin and I shared an 8-person room with Blaz and Uros, and I took the hottest shower I could before bed to warm up and took the blankets off the beds that weren't being used and piled them all on top of me. We all slept like babies! The Heineken Experience: Sunday morning, and it was beer for breakfast, since our first stop of the day after walking through the seedy red light district was to visit the Heineken museum. What a cool place. We only paid five euros, and took an awesome tour, had three tickets for a free beer or pop, and got a Heineken beer glass in a Heineken tin as a souvenir. It was the best deal we got all weekend and the visit was worth so much more than we paid. We got to see the process for making the beer, look at hops and barley in the different stages of brewing, look inside the huge copper containers where the beer sits while the yeast matures, look at Heineken ads and commercials from around the world, visit the "Heineken Stadium" with its cool reclining chairs and music videos, and play the drums. We had a great time. Since we were in the neighborhood, we walked through the passage of the Rijksmuseum and stopped to videotape a man posing as a statue of Rembrandt kissing Corin's hand. He stood up and let out a cheer when she dropped some coins into his box. Wandered the streets doing some more last-minute souvenir shopping before hopping on the bus again, a welcome relief from all of our walking, reclaimed the Ladies' Lounge, and got cozy while watching another season of Friends. Tired and not looking forward to a full day of classes, we returned to Angers at 4:30 this morning. Well i have some more stories that are ready to be posted but i just wanted to make sure you all got to read these things first! I will have deleted most of this writing and will have put up all new ones in about a week, so check back soon! |
| It's described best in the words of my friend Jennifer... |