Trip to the Continent Part Two: Amsterdam!

I loved Amsterdam.
Everyone always talks about how Amsterdam is such a party town and so wild and crazy, and that is all true, but I never realized how extremely beautiful it is and how nice the people there are. Whereas with Brussels 4 hours was more then enough time, I didn't think two days in Amsterdam was nearly enough. I would live there if only I could learn to properly pronounce any dutch words.
We arrived around 8 in the evening on Friday night, just in time to witness some of Amstedam's famous nightlife. Our hostel was in Leidesplein, one of the happening nightlife districts, a bit further from the center of the city. We stayed at the Flying Pig Palace which I highly recomend if you are under 30 and traveling to Amsterdam. Very clean and nice and on a quiet street right across from Vondelpark (a really big and pretty park). Leidsplein is full of bars and clubs and of course coffeeshops. If you aren't hip to the Amsterdam lingo, coffeeshops are where you can buy and smoke pot. There is one on almost every street corner, some have different themes or funny names. They are mostly filled with tourists it seems. As a whole Amsterdam was full of tourists, we met many other traveling students (mostly Americans) which was interesting. They are so used to having American tourists there that everyone speaks English, which was a releif after Brussels. At the same time I think there were a lot of areas that were less touristy and more quantly european. It was a nice mix (the picture of the clubs above was takn just a couple of blocks from this picture of the canal if you can beleive it). Of course all throughout the trip I couldn't speak at all, I could only whisper and squeak due to some unfortunate sickness I've developed. Ava had to serve as my intepretor all weekend long.
Amsterdam is layed out kind of like a bullseye, with the Red Light District in the center and rings of canals leading outwards. We were on I think the outer rim of the fifth canal, the Singelgracht. It is not a very big city and it was easy for us to walk basically everywhere, although they have cute little trolleys running around as well. The canals were gorgeous to walk around; shady and residential in some places, in others filled with cute little stores.
Our first day we walked to Anne Frank's house, where her family hid from the Nazis for two years and where she wrote her famous diary. It was a very sad but interesting museum. Afterwards to cheer ourselves up we went on the Heineken experience tour. It was very fun, it cost 10 euros and there are several bars throughtout the tour where you can get a total of three free beers. We watched Heineken commercials through the ages, learned how beer is made (which i already knew-thanks dad!), and even got to experience what it is like to be a beer bottle (apparently it's very fun). At the end you get a free gift- ours was a metal heineken bottle opener in a beer can shaped tin. It was a very fun way to spend an afternoon. We also spent some time waundering the various canals and checking out the shops. Later, we were actually able to eat Mexican food! I was so excited, you can't get mexican food anywhere in London! that alone made the whole trip worthwhile.
On Sunday morning we went to the Van Gogh museum. They have over 200 Van Gogh pieces including some really famous ones like Sunflowers and The Potato Eaters. You can follow the pictures chronologically to see his progression as an artist- apparently all of his works were painted during a short ten year period before he killed himself. It was really fascinating. For lunch on Sunday we sampled one of the Netherland's delicacies, french fries smothered in mayoinasse. It was really gross, I'm not sure how they all aren't 1000 pounds there.
Unfortunatly Sunday afternoon we had to get back on the train for a 5 hours trip back home. I definatly need to go back to Amsterdam, there is a lot to see there that I missed the first time, and it is such a lovely city. This trip made me really excited for my next trip, coming up in just two weeks. Four of us crazy American girls will be touring Prague and Budapest for a week. Exciting!
But for now it's back to school work and all that fun stuff... I hope my voice comes back soon at least! Oh and I have many more interesting pictures of Europe, just not room on here to post them. So if you are interested in seeing more you can check out my shutterfly page:
http://syoder.shutterfly.com/action/