Baby went to Amsterdam

Well, I finally made it to Amsterdam! If you don’t understand my title reference, it is a really good song by a group called “Peter Bjorn and John.” Their song, Amsterdam, was my anthem and the rest of their album played the entire trip. Unfortunately I was only able to spend a measly weekend there, but I made every moment count. I was supposed to arrive at 6:30 in the afternoon, giving me enough time to at least start off seeing Amsterdam by night, but due to airport delays, I didn’t arrive until after 9 PM.

Amsterdam also marked a lot of firsts for me:

• My first time travelling alone – it gets really difficult travelling with groups when everyone is on their individual schedules. After a while, I got tired of waiting for other people to decide whether or not they were able to go. So what did I do? Decided to be independent and do it on my own. A lot of people worry that travelling alone is unsafe, and although there are more risks, it is nothing that being cautious and smart couldn’t solve.
• My first time couch surfing – if you have never heard of CS, you should! I learned about it while in Barcelona, when I had a conversation with a stranger-turned-friend about his own travels. Basically, you look up people in the city you’re travelling to and ask them if you can stay with them. The idea of Couch Surfing is to have a free place to stay and bond with your host. My first host was fairly nice. He cooked me dinner and took me [on his bike] to a bar.
•  My first time in the Netherlands – Especially since I didn’t get to go to London or any other Northern Western European country. It was an amazing change of scenery. Amsterdam is surrounded by canals, with little houseboats floating in place and ducks quacking along. The buildings were beautiful hues of  purples and grays. Everything is old, quaint and romantic.
• My first time in a coffeeshop – enough said about that one.
• My first time in a Red Light District – prostitutes advertising in red-lit windows. Electronica music blasting from speakers onto the streets. Peep shows, live sex shows, strip clubs, sex shops. The Red Light District doesn’t leave room for fantasizing. It was an interesting sight to see.

I was surprised to find that there was more to Amsterdam than just what tourists know it for, sex and drugs. Yes, sex and drugs are a big part of the culture, but they also have beautiful flowers, delicious cheeses, a palace, museums, windmills, and if I was able to spend more time there I would have discovered more.

It’s no joke when people say that people ride bikes there. There are more bikes than cars! I had to be careful not to get run over by bikes considering that I didn’t know the rules of the road. What you think is a pedestrian crossing is only for bicycles, and they get very annoyed if you get in the way. I had the pleasure of being on the back of my CS hosts bike in blistering cold weather, with nothing but a light jacket on. Despite being frozen to the core, it was really entertaining seeing travelling through Amsterdam on a bike.

I am not a huge fan of museums when I only have a few days (or a day in this case) to travel, but I absolutely had to go to the van Gogh museum. I saw a lot of famous works, but was a little confused when I couldn’t find The Starry Night in any of the collections. Turns out, the painting I absolutely had to see is actually located in New York. Oh well. But I did get to look at Sunflower, The Potato Eaters, self-portaits, Bedroom, and other such famous works. While walking around, a quote on a wall caught me off guard, inspiring me: do “what I am not yet able to, in order to learn to do it.” A good lesson for someone like me, who often prevents herself from doing something because she “can’t do it”.

I didn’t have or sue a single map while I was in Amsterdam. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to use one, but because I didn’t have one. I wouldn’t recommend travelling without a map, for me at least, it limited where I could go because I didn’t want to get too lost. While lost however, is when you find the most interesting things. I ended up wandering into to Heineken Museum, a series of flower shops and delicious cheese shops that way. Cheese, by the way, is nothing like I have ever tried before. When you think of cheese, what do you think of? American, parmesan, provolone, swiss, etc? Try sampling pesto, goat cheese with herbs and garlic, very old goat cheese, smoked cheese goats milk… Needless to say, I became a huge fan of goat cheese.

I hope I can go back to Amsterdam again. It is a city that doesn’t even feel real. Beauty, culture, sex, history, all mixed into one.

And with Amsterdam checked off my to do list, where have I gone so far?

• Madrid (obviously)
• Valencia
• Barcelona
• El Escorial
• Toledo
• Salamanca
• Lisbon (Portugal)
• Segovia
• Rome (Italy)
• Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

And where will I be going in the next 3 weeks I have left?

• Granada
• Sevilla

Gotta love this semester ❤