Finally! My blog about Amsterdam, it is almost three pages long so hopefully you understand why it took me a few days.
Most people think of Amsterdam as the city of legalized marijuana and prostitution. Thankfully, I got to find so much more!
Day 1, November 5: Ian and I meet Stephen and Erin at 6:30 to catch our bus to get to Helsinki. Getting out of Finland is the biggest pain, traveling inside Finland was worse than the actual two and a half hour plane ride to Amsterdam. We’re all still a little confused with the public transportation system, probably because all they speak is Finnish and we have to change buses a few times to go straight to the airport. We asked the driver where we need to transfer and he told us only once, in Tampere. So, we change buses and are feeling pretty accomplished! There were a few more stops along the way to pick up more people. There was one stop where the new driver said something but we wrote it off because we knew we only had one stop. That was wrong. Apparently, the airport in Helsinki is about twenty minutes away from the city center; where did we end up? The center of Helsinki. So, after our 40€ taxi to take us back in the direction we came, we got to the airport! We did the normal airport thing and got on our flight. If anybody is in the EU and is flying to Amsterdam on the KLM airline…you get free Heineken. J We drank a lot of Heineken in those four days. David (Meg’s niece’s boyfriend whom I’ve met a few times prior to Amsterdam) lives about fifteen minutes outside of Amsterdam and he picked us up from the airport then took us to our hostel. We got our own bathroom! This is a really impressive thing for hostels. Then we decide we were famished (and needed more Heineken). We walked around, and by then it was dark, and the entire city was lit up and looked amazing. We found an Italian restaurant (among the many) with real Italians! Woo! They told us we got free bread, so they won us over. Our first dinner was a lot of pizza and beer with Italians swearing at each other.
Fun Fact: There are literally three or four ‘coffeeshops’ on every street. ‘Coffeeshop’ in Amsterdam equals place that sells weed.
Day2, November 6: We got to sleep in! We needed it after our bus fiasco. And the beds in the hostel were more comfortable than our actual beds in Finland, isn’t that sad? We took full advantage of our beds and pillows. We walked around and looked for breakfast. After a lot of debating over which place to go we found an awesome bakery. It had great cinnamon rolls, bagels, muffins, good and easy breakfast food. I got a bagel with goat cheese, walnuts and honey…it was delectable! I’ve never liked goat cheese before visiting Holland. We find our way to Dam Square to meet up with David. There were many street performers. Dam Square is the area in my facebook pictures with the tall monument and the royal palace. There is a lot of room for people to perform; this is the picture of Darth Vader and King Neptune. There was also Freddy Krueger and some other weird costumes, I was really only interested with Darth Vader. We met David and found some bikes to rent! Stephen and Erin decided not to rent bikes and walk around the city for the day. Ian, David and I rode about an hour to Zaandam, his home town. I loved, loved, loved this part of The Netherlands. It’s so green and beautiful! It’s actually a big tourist hot spot because of the windmills. There were so many of them! They’re massive and very historic looking. We got to visit a clog making museum where you can also buy real clogs to take home with you; I really wanted a pair by the way but I settled with a small knick-knack sized one. They used the clogs for a lot of different things; since Holland is so wet they had to use them to keep their feet dry while working outside. Another example: there were clogs for weddings with intricate carvings or clogs for walking across ice with little spikes on the bottom. After that we went to a cheese museum. I’ve never tasted such fantastic cheese! I will never eat cheddar again. Why? It’s not real cheese. Cheese does not turn yellow, it is an added dye. And cheese is formed in a circle shape, not blocks. I could have eaten cheese all day. I decided to buy the pesto cheese, it’s the bright green cheese in my pictures. J Let me tell you, it makes the very best grilled cheese.
After getting to see great landscape we went to David’s home where his mom cooked us a traditional Dutch meal. Sadly, I can’t remember the name but it was mashed potatoes mixed with sausage and a spinach-like green. She also made some really great soup. It felt so good to have Mom’s homemade cooking again.
We got back to the city centre and are dying to go out and explore some more. We’re strolling around where we see some random red lights but think nothing of it. And then we see a girl dancing in a window with only a bra and underwear on. I’ll give you three chances to guess where we were.
I loved The Red Light District. It sounds strange, I know, but it’s so fascinating! Literally, there are girls in windows all down a street. If there is a red light lit above the window it signals that there is a girl ‘working.’ Another fun fact: the blue light district is for transvestites. Don’t worry, we only saw one. We sat in a bar for two hours just watching ‘business transactions’ with the prostitutes. Erin and I were very intrigued with The Red Light District.
Day 3, November 7: We had to switch hostels. We loved our first hostel because we didn’t have to share a room with fifteen other people. But, we could not afford the nicer one all four nights. Our new hostel had twenty beds in one room and one giant bathroom for two of these giant rooms to share. I’m so happy we went at an off time of the year because we were the only ones in the room and bathroom. The new hostel was very clean and convenient so it worked out. Erin and I decided to go wander by ourselves on Monday, the boys wanted to go find a certain coffeeshop. We went to the Erotic Museum! It was a good thing to do with another girl. We just thought it hilarious and weren’t freaked out by all the intense artwork. It really is a porn museum but we still had fun! And it gave us another excuse to visit The Red Light District again. Afterwards we went to the giant Heineken store, which of course we loved. There are bottles painted as the Sistine Chapel, Christmas Heineken, almost anything you can imagine. I bought a little souvenir package for 5€ that comes with a painted bottle and two small Heineken glasses and some new headphones (I needed new ones anyways and Heineken presented the perfect opportunity to buy new ones). We finally met back up with the boys and we decided to see the Torture Museum. We had so much fun at the Torture Museum. There were medieval torture devices, like a chair with spikes on it and people would have to sit on it while somebody tightens the straps to make them go deeper onto the spikes. Or a real life chastity belt! Those looked scary… or an iron maiden. Unfortunately, there is no record of an iron maiden ever actually being used. I’m bummed I didn’t take any pictures! I thought it was against museum etiquette to take pictures.
That night, we ate a ‘shoarma’ which is thinly sliced lamb with vegetables and some kind of a delicious sauce in a tortilla shell. Amsterdam has a crazy amount of international food: Argentina, Brazil, Indian, Spanish, Italian, Greek, so much! The best late night food: frosted waffles.
Day 4, November 8: Another great day of walking around and gazing at the great architecture. Today was the day we got to see the Anne Frank house! Erin and I were looking forward to this for weeks. It’s truly an amazing experience. They’ve turned it into a great museum. We got a tour through the entire building from the office space through the annex. Everything they owned was confiscated when they were arrested so they left the rooms empty and wrote exerts from the diary on the walls and posted some artifacts that were found. At the end there’s another really nice museum that talked about what happened to Anne Frank and her family after they were arrested. We saw the actual diary she wrote in, she also revised it because she wanted it to be published so we got to see those pages as well. It was in German so we didn’t understand it but it was still very moving. We also saw a video of the concentration camps, which is still so horrifying to see. The Dutch actually are still not very fond of the Germans because of the invasion in World War 2. When they invaded Holland they decided it was necessary to bomb it when Holland’s army was nearly nonexistent anyways.
After we made ourselves happy again and got some lunch, the boys wanted to go to the Sex Museum (there is a difference between the Erotic Museum and the Sex Museum). They were not prepared with what they were about to see. They were freaked out by the ‘intense’ pictures and wanted to get out quickly. Erin and I had no sympathy since we saw it twice. J
Our last meal was at a great Spanish restaurant. We ordered delicious sangria and wonderful tasting food. The last thing we did in Amsterdam was find the Dampkring coffeeshop because a scene from Oceans 12 was filmed there.
We were not looking forward to traveling back to Finland the next day.
Day 5, November 9: We come back to Finlandia! And it welcomed us back by being colder than when we left. But, now I get to look forward to Lapland.
Moral of the story: put Amsterdam down on your bucket list because it’s an incredible city that I would gladly visit again.
