Fall Break '10: Amsterdam

Hello everyone! Happy November! Sorry it takes me so long to get these entries done, they should have been finished last week! Anyway...

For the third city on our eurotrip, we took a train from Luxembourg to Amsterdam. We had to transfer in Brussels, which is funny cause we're were there 3 days later. Anyway, once we got to Amsterdam we took a cab to our hotel. I immediately loved Amsterdam. It felt like an artsy/bohemian city to me. Plus, the Dutch are extremely open, especially with sex and marijuana. The souvenir shops had some very sexual souvenirs, like penis-shaped salt & pepper shakers, as well as pot leaf souvenirs.

Our hotel was named Hans Brinker, a "budget hotel." It was more like a hostel than a hotel. We did get our own room and bathroom, as well as lockers. But there was a sign that said not to leave valuables in the rooms. The lockers are very easy to break open. There were a lot of young people staying in the hotel, including Americans. One amusing things about the hotel is that they advertise how bad they are.

The hotel street

Amsterdam had some good street art

The first thing we did was visit a coffee shop. All coffee shops sell weed in Amsterdam. You have to be at least 18 to enter them. You can buy the weed itself, pre-rolled joints, or brownies. It was culture shock to see a menu just for weed. I'm not much of a pot smoker, so the fact that weed was so accessible wasn't a big deal to me. However, it was relieving that you didn't have go through shady means to buy and smoke weed.

We went to a sports bar to eat lunch because we hadn't ate much during our journey. I got myself a hefty English Breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast. I love breakfast meals! It was so yummy. Although, one thing about the city is that the restaurants don't give free tap water, so we had to spend 6 euro on a bottle of water.

Our hotel was right in city centre, a great location for shopping.

After lunch, we went out to explore the city. I went straight into a gift and bought myself an Amsterdam messenger bag, a t-shirt, postcards, and lighters for my friends back home. There were so many awesome stores. I wish I could have gone shopping, but I didn't want to go overboard. We went deeper into the city centre. That weekend there was a fair going on with rides and games. We just checked out all the souvenir shops, which had some interesting things in them. One common Dutch souvenir is the wooden clogs. I bought mini ones to put on my desk.

Ferris wheel at the fair

There's a shopping mall inside!

The one thing that began to unsettle me about Amsterdam was that walking around at night made me very nervous. Beneath all the great sights and whatnot, the city is pretty sketchy, especially at night. I liked it better during the day.

The next day we set out to do some museum visits. There's lots of great (but pricey) museums to visit. We took a walk in a very nice inside Vondel Park first before going to the Van Gogh Museum, which was outside city centre.

Check meeee out.

The Van Gogh Museum was beautiful. The paintings were arranged chronologically. They had some other artists as well, like Claude Monet. Unfortunately Starry Night isn't there because it's in the MoMA in New York. I saw it the first time I went there.

In the museum shop I picked up postcards of the paintings I liked, and I bought my sister a mug. I spend a long time debating whether or not I should get my mom a gift in the museum too, but I decided not to, based on her tastes. After we had gotten lunch Stephanie and I went to a different museum while Anna went to the Heineken brewery. I forgot how to spell the name of the museum we went to, but there were lots of Dutch paintings (some by Vermeer and Rembrandt) and artifacts. I found the museum to be pretty boring, so I just glanced at the paintings. There were large tour groups crowding the paintings, so I didn't even get to look at the more interesting paintings.

Stephanie wasn't feeling so well so when Anna met up with us we went back to the hotel. Stephanie stayed in while Anna and I went out to meet our roommate Hannah. She came with us to dinner and then had to leave to meet her friend. Anna and I decided to find the Red Light District. It was so crowded with tourists (mostly male). The prostitutes just stand in the windows waiting to be bought. There are red lights above their windows (hence the name "Red Light" District). Including prostitutes, there sex shops and theaters with live sex shows. A very shady area indeed.

The Red Light District before it opens

On our way home Anna and I were heckled by two guys who wanted us to party with them. Anna said it was just a way to pickpocket us, further confirming my belief about how sketchy Amsterdam can really be. I feel safer walking the streets of Manhattan at 3 AM.

The next day we went to the Anne Frank House. It's not her actual house because she grew up in Germany. This was the house she hid in before the Nazis took her. It's a really popular museum, with tickets selling out for the next couple of days. We had bought a card that got us into any museum, so all we did was wait on a long line in cold, rainy, weather.

The museum was probably the most depressing place I've been to. You climb the stars to the secret annex where Anne and her family hid. Most of the furniture was gone, but some belongings were kept. They even had her original diaries as well as photographs. The saddest room showed the concentration camps where everyone was deserted. What was really sad was that only Anne's father survived. Anne had giving up on life after her sister died, believing everyone in her family was dead.

The museum had a bookstore with copies of The Diary of Anne Frank in different languages, as well as other books about the Holocaust. After the museum we got lunch, and then tried to find another museum to visit. We couldn't find the one we were looking for, so we went back to city centre.

We spent the rest of the night checking out bookshops, souvenirs stores, and the Red Light District (so Stephanie could see it). We had another early day, catching the train to the last city, Brussels.

Last photo in Amsterdam

More photos on Facebook!