Amsterdam

After exiting the train, my first impression of Amsterdam was that they have a lot of bikes! When we first arrived we saw masses of bikes chained up everywhere and masses of people riding bikes. When you’re walking the streets you have to look every direction to make sure you won’t get hit by a car, tram, bike or person. It’s chaos! But a chaos that is familiar to everyone living there. People rode their bikes either by themselves or with a child or three strapped onto their bike. They have a seat in front of their seat as well as in back of their seat. It was amazing. Those Amsterdamians must have some powerful legs.

Like Belgium, the weather was grey the majority of the time we were there. This weather, I’ve realized, doesn’t make for good photos. There are also waterways throughout the entire city, which was lovely! I suppose if you wanted to you could get to most places by boat.

Our hotel was a couple miles from the center of town where we spent most of our time so we did quite a bit of walking. We estimated about 15 miles. Perhaps we’ll invest in a pedometer for our next travel. Luckily, tram 2’s tracks took us pretty much from our hotel directly into town and beyond so we were easily able to find our way around!

We enjoyed a Turkish pizza for 2 Euro for lunch on the first day there. It was an accidental find, but a good one! When walking around that afternoon a guy came up to us and told us about a special event where you pay a one-time fee and are allowed to get into certain bars and clubs throughout the night and have a free drink at each place. We decided to do that on Friday night and had a lot of fun and met people from all over the world! In many of the bars and restaurants in Amsterdam you had to pay 50 cent Euro to use the bathroom, which I thought was ridiculous but had to give into a couple times anyways.

We slept in on Saturday and then ate at a pancake café, which was delicious. There were many museums in Amsterdam and we decided we should go to a few. Unfortunately, they were all too expensive for what we wanted so we decided on the cheapest one- the Torture Museum! It was pretty interesting and there was at one time many awful means of torturing, mostly for witches or people who spoke badly of the king it seemed. After that we did a lot more walking and had a low-key night. 

I had been feeling ill all day long but kept thinking it would pass. Saturday night I got an intense shiver attack for about an hour and then threw up once, began feeling a little better and thought that would be it. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop but I continued to throw up about every 20 minutes for the rest of the night, shivering uncontrollably in between. Of course after about the second time it was mostly dry heaving, which, is almost more uncomfortable. I probably ended up having about 20-30 puking instances. I felt bad that Ryan and Sam had to hear it almost every time. Ryan did say that I puked gracefully though. That was nice. I guess if you're going to puke it might as well be graceful! We aren't quite sure what the cause of the puke was but our best guess is food poisoning. I was glad we stayed in a hotel verses a hostel because hostels have community bathrooms. I think that would have made the experience much worse. Sunday night after I arrived home my host mom made me some soup, got some extra blankets, pillows, a puke bowl, some chamomile tea and tucked me into bed early. I slept for nearly 12 hours and thus, am feeling much better today!

Throughout our stay in Amsterdam it was normal to have the smell of weed wafting in the air, as it is legal to smoke there. They have “coffee shops” all over the place where you can buy your weed and either smoke it there or as you walk along the street. This was so unusual. They also had an H&M on it seemed about every other block. They also had a ton of boots! However, Sam and Ryan aren’t too into shopping and I didn’t want to drag them along into multiple stores searching for the perfect pair of boots. I’ll find some soon, I hope.

Apparently yesterday there was a march titled the Shame Protest throughout Brussels. We saw people with their face painted and flags tied around their necks on the tram ride home. Belgium hasn’t had a government for over 200 days now and so this march was protesting the lack of government and kind of telling the politicians to get their act together. I guess time will tell if the protest has made a difference.

The hotel room with three beds squished together

Enjoying the Turkish pizza

This looked very Dutch to me

An example of a bike with three seats

The I amsterdam sign

This guy was just sitting there so I decided he wanted his picture taken, too

An outdoor toilet, or water closet (hence the WC) as they call it

An outdoor urinal

There were a lot of fresh fruit markets along our walk

Dutch clogs lined the walls and ceiling

Our first ice cube sighting!

Gettin' their groove on at a club

There were a lot of people there

Yummy cappuccino!

This is how they serve their water

My peach pancake

A torture device