live.laugh.love--the journey: Did you know there are more bikes than people in Amsterdam?

Amsterdam was put on the calendar right around Thanksgiving, in other words a late addition to our semester’s allotted travel weekends, and I’m SO glad we did! I had no expectations for Amsterdam. I couldn’t really picture it in my mind and really went into it thinking it will be fun to say I’ve been there.

WELL... I’m definitely glad I can say we spent three full days exploring Utrecht (city outside of Amsterdam, 10 min Intercity-train ride) and the Red Light District of crazy AmStErDaM! Thursday night we took the night train into Amsterdam and arrived Friday morning. From there we caught a taxi to Merril’s apartment (Holly’s friend who did a year exchange program in Michigan with her their junior year of high school.) Merril was nice enough to let us stay with her Friday night in her ADORABLE apartment, I felt like it was straight out of Bridget Jone’s Diary—honestly! The cutest thing ever, she showed us around, took us to the Anne Frank house, showed us Amsterdam’s beautiful canals, and showed us some local hotspots her and her friends hang out at. It was so nice to be taken around by a local—I feel like we’ve been lucky, Aidan in Paris, Liz and Hil in Barcelona… and now Merril in Amsterdam!

Saturday was a little wet and cold but we still had a lot of ground to cover. We got some much needed sleep and woke up to Merril brewing us tea and making plates of bread and cheese. We grabbed some coffee and took the train into downtown Amsterdam. Saturday was also December 5^th which is a big holiday for the Dutch—Sinterclaus (sp?) which is as big a deal to them as Christmas is to us, but more so for little kids (they also celebrate Christmas) So anyways, Merril had to say goodbye to us on Saturday but we were fine on our own, learned how to navigate the bus system and get by marginally on our own. Saturday night we stayed in a hostel right on the main strip called Bob’s Youth Hostel. We were put in an all girls room painted bubble gum pink and met these two really nice girls from Australia. There were lockers for our important stuff and the beds were clean and everything seemed nice, our 22E each included breakfast the next morning.

Saturday night we walked around the Red Light District... ummhmmmm the one where the girls stand in the windows with red fluorescent lighting in lingerie and people just walk up to their window and order! Yup! REALLY INTERESTING to watch this legalized form of prostitution. A lot of the girls were disgusting looking too so I just don’t even know how it works. Blahhhh. Gross but very eye-opening. Oh the land of "everything goes." By everything they mean everything. The only restriction really is that you have to be 18+ to go into bars and “coffee shops.” Coffee shops are not where they sell coffee (ha ha) they sell weed. You can get it in many forms, cupcakes (they call these Space Cakes), spiffs (a mixture of weed and tobacco) or weed that you can just buy by the ounce. VERY DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE. To grow up learning about drugs in school and have them forbidden all my life to taking an overnight train and arriving on a different planet. Literally.

That night we were in our hostel relatively early, and woke up the next morning with more to see. Our train wasn’t leaving until 5pm so we had the whole day to explore. I really wanted to rent bikes and take them all around the city but it was too rainy on Sunday to do that so instead we took the intercity bus to the Van Gogh Museum. The museum was really cool—but Starry Night was on tour!! Or something? Anyways, it wasn’t there which was kind of sad but I still saw some pieces I really connected with.

Seascapes near Les-Saintes-Marines-de-la-mar was one of my favorites of Van Gogh. I also liked Wheatfeild under the clouds. And La Corniche near Monaco was a really pretty one done by Monet.

There was also this really cool coffee shop called The Bulldog that we went to a few times and a lot of people from years back told us to go to. The bulldog is Redlands mascot so students will by shirts from the coffee shop and wear them around school, kind of fun. Anyways I got a grey one and LJ got a white one. They will always remind us of our visit to lovely Amsterdam J