When I came to England, I basically knew nothing about Europe and I heard a lot of the students here say that Amsterdam is a really fun city to visit. At first, I didn't know what they meant by that... but now I do. This should explain it:
As our tour guide told us, you basically come to Amsterdam for three things: museums, drugs, and/or sex. It's pretty much true.
Even though I didn't have a "new experience" there, I did enjoy seeing the city, just because it's so different from what I'm used to.
The tour guide we had was really funny and interesting and he went out of his way to make sure we had fun (like buying us food to sample, telling us funny stories, showing us good places to eat, etc..) I realized that tour guides really impact the way you view the places you visit. Last weekend when I went to Scotland, the tour guide barely talked to us or seemed to care so I didn't feel as interested in anything, but this weekend I felt really excited and curious about everything because the tour guide was enthusiastic too.
Anyways! so my trip started at 9:30 PM Friday night with a long, uncomfortable nine hour bus ride.
We stopped here around 1 AM. Here are the girls I mostly spent the weekend with:
Thu, Adrienne (the black thing in the middle.. she doesn't like pictures), and Jessica.
Tracey!
Since the UK is an island, we had to use something called the Eurotunnel to cross the border into Europe.
It's really hard to explain how this thing works. Basically cars and buses drive into a "box" (a compartment), and these compartments are on a long conveyer belt type thing that goes really fast. So in 30 minutes, you have crossed from the UK into the rest of Europe.
The inside. You can't see anything out the windows while you're in here so it's not as interesting as it seems.
8 AM-- hello Amsterdam!!
This is the city's center.
There are not that many cars in Amsterdam. Most people take the tram (pictured above) or ride bikes. There are a ton of bikes everywhere.
Near the flower market.
The flower market... so pretty!!
Amsterdam got its name because "Amster" is the name of the river which runs through it and "dam" is what it is, a huge dam. There are small canals running all throughout the city. Really pretty... but the water in it is brown.
These public urinals are all around the city. You either have to be super drunk or have no sense of shame to use this. But I figure those two go hand-in-hand most of the time.
Some of our tour group (basically the people who didn't want to eat "happy cakes" or smoke) went on a 1.5 hour canal cruise in the morning.
The inside of the boat... I moved onto the open-air deck after a few minutes because the view was much better there.
So in Amsterdam, some people literally live on the water!!! This is a house on water.
This one has a garden too. These houses have everything you need, including plumbing, electricity, and gas.
I found NEMO!!
...sort of, haha.
NEMO is the name of a museum, the huge turquoise building.
That's a Chinese restaurant on the right.
Another house. There were a lot of these actually... I only took pictures of the ones I liked.
This is a float for the gay parade. I forgot to mention that the day we were in Amsterdam was also the day of the gay parade. So you can imagine how crazy and hectic it was later on when the parade was going on...
After the cruise, our tour guide took us here... (a "MUST DO" in Amsterdam, as he says).
There is a huge sign near the museums that says: "I amsterdam"
I climbed up the "t" because I wanted to get to the "e" and take a picture on it, but in the end I didn't because I was too afraid... so sad.
We spent almost an hour taking pictures here...
This is the Van Gogh museum.
We ate this for lunch. It was inexpensive and good.
This was the "queue" (line) to get into the Anne Frank House.
...and people waiting to see the parade nearby.
Waiting in line.
While we were waiting in line, the parade started!
This parade is interesting and different because all the floats were on the canal.
We saw parts of the parade throughout the day.
Actually, not really... I couldn't see past all the bodies in my way, so I had to hold my camera up really high, take a video, and then watch it on my camera to see what was going on... sad, huh!
Anyways, enough of that... here is the inside of the Anne Frank House:
We weren't allowed to take pictures in here so I didn't take that many because I was afraid of getting caught.
One thing that struck me the most about the Anne Frank House was a video we saw of her dad, the only member of the Frank family who survived through the concentration camps, talking about his reaction after reading Anne's diary. He talked about how surprised he was at the depth of emotion and thought of her writings because Anne was usually reserved and quiet.
How tragic it must be to lose someone close to you in such cruel circumstances, and then realize that there was so much more to that person you could have seen and known.
Anyways, here was our next destination: the flea market.
Hash pops and cannabis seeds (drugs), commonly sold around Amsterdam.
It was really crazy walking around the city while the gay parade was going on. The music was loud and people were everywhere, dancing, drinking, smoking (don't even want to know how many different kinds of second-hand smoke I inhaled that day), sitting from the windows of the buildings... I felt overwhelmed and tired.
While we were walking around, it really made me wonder... why do people celebrate homosexuality? And by endorsing it in such a way and rewarding this type of lifestyle, isn't society sending out the message that it's not only okay, but even good and admirable to come out of the closet? You can imagine the potential danger behind this whole idea: young men who grew up never having a real sense of community turning to homosexuality for acceptance.. it's sad.
After about 10 hours in the city, we all met to go back to our hotel.
We got really lucky this weekend because there were complications with our original hotel, so we got to stay in another, much nicer one!
We had an en-suite bathroom... WOW! I haven't had my own bathroom since I came here.
Tracey and I shared a room... we were seriously so happy when we saw it. Not even funny.
Later on at night, we went on a tour of the red light district.
I didn't know this about Amsterdam until I came to England and heard people talk about it, but the red light district is known for its prostitutes and easily accessible sex. Shady, right? That's why I made sure to come to Amsterdam with a tour group and not on my own..
Here it is..
I was afraid to take too many pictures because our tour guide warned us not to get pictures of the prostitutes. He said one time one of the students in his tour group took a photo of one of the girls, and a bouncer came out and smashed her camera on the ground.
Also while we were here, I saw a female tourist take a picture of one of the girls... and the girl opened her window and started cussing out the tourist, calling her a lesbian and telling her to get away. I was really shocked.
Walking through the Red Light District reminded me of New Orleans and the one night my team and I went out to Bourbon St... but worse than that.
Amongst the adult bars, sex theaters (not completely sure what these are; don't want to know anyway), sex shops, and even a sex museum, I think the thing that shocked me the most were the "windows." Basically a window is a small room illuminated by red lights with a scantily clad prostitute standing inside trying to lure potential clients (aka lonely men). I guess another way to describe this is literally "window shopping for prostitutes."
The tour guide told us not to feel sorry for the prostitutes because they make about 400 euros a day ($700), but I still felt sad when I saw them. It doesn't matter how much they make... how can you put a price tag on your dignity and self-worth?
Whenever I normally think of cafes and coffee shops, I think of these cute, girly places to sit down and enjoy a good book or have a long conversation with a friend. But in Amsterdam, a coffee shop is a place you go to to smoke or buy space cakes, which are brownies and muffins baked with drugs inside them.
I went inside this one just to look around, but it smelled so terrible I left after a few seconds.
We just walked around the rest of the night and got dinner at this Italian place. But we were still hungry since we split only two pizzas amongst the five of us, so we got fries afterwards.
Fries are pretty popular in Amsterdam and are usually eaten with mayonnaise. Sounds kinda gross, right? You can get other sauces too, like curry and stuff...
The sauce we got was good. It tasted like the "special sauce" from In-N-Out.
As if this entry wasn't long enough already, this is a video to sum up my day:
It's actually pretty boring... but I feel like things come alive more when they are captured on video.
I really liked Amsterdam for what it was to me: a culture shock. However, just after the first ten minutes I stepped into the city, I knew I could never live there. One day in Amsterdam was definitely enough for me.
As our tour guide told us, you basically come to Amsterdam for three things: museums, drugs, and/or sex. It's pretty much true.
Even though I didn't have a "new experience" there, I did enjoy seeing the city, just because it's so different from what I'm used to.
The tour guide we had was really funny and interesting and he went out of his way to make sure we had fun (like buying us food to sample, telling us funny stories, showing us good places to eat, etc..) I realized that tour guides really impact the way you view the places you visit. Last weekend when I went to Scotland, the tour guide barely talked to us or seemed to care so I didn't feel as interested in anything, but this weekend I felt really excited and curious about everything because the tour guide was enthusiastic too.
Anyways! so my trip started at 9:30 PM Friday night with a long, uncomfortable nine hour bus ride.
We stopped here around 1 AM. Here are the girls I mostly spent the weekend with:
Thu, Adrienne (the black thing in the middle.. she doesn't like pictures), and Jessica.
Tracey!Since the UK is an island, we had to use something called the Eurotunnel to cross the border into Europe.
It's really hard to explain how this thing works. Basically cars and buses drive into a "box" (a compartment), and these compartments are on a long conveyer belt type thing that goes really fast. So in 30 minutes, you have crossed from the UK into the rest of Europe.
The inside. You can't see anything out the windows while you're in here so it's not as interesting as it seems.
8 AM-- hello Amsterdam!!
This is the city's center.
There are not that many cars in Amsterdam. Most people take the tram (pictured above) or ride bikes. There are a ton of bikes everywhere.
Near the flower market.
The flower market... so pretty!!
Amsterdam got its name because "Amster" is the name of the river which runs through it and "dam" is what it is, a huge dam. There are small canals running all throughout the city. Really pretty... but the water in it is brown.
These public urinals are all around the city. You either have to be super drunk or have no sense of shame to use this. But I figure those two go hand-in-hand most of the time.Some of our tour group (basically the people who didn't want to eat "happy cakes" or smoke) went on a 1.5 hour canal cruise in the morning.
The inside of the boat... I moved onto the open-air deck after a few minutes because the view was much better there.
So in Amsterdam, some people literally live on the water!!! This is a house on water.
This one has a garden too. These houses have everything you need, including plumbing, electricity, and gas.
I found NEMO!!...sort of, haha.
NEMO is the name of a museum, the huge turquoise building.
That's a Chinese restaurant on the right.
Another house. There were a lot of these actually... I only took pictures of the ones I liked.
This is a float for the gay parade. I forgot to mention that the day we were in Amsterdam was also the day of the gay parade. So you can imagine how crazy and hectic it was later on when the parade was going on...
After the cruise, our tour guide took us here... (a "MUST DO" in Amsterdam, as he says).
There is a huge sign near the museums that says: "I amsterdam"
I climbed up the "t" because I wanted to get to the "e" and take a picture on it, but in the end I didn't because I was too afraid... so sad.
We spent almost an hour taking pictures here...
This is the Van Gogh museum.
We ate this for lunch. It was inexpensive and good.
This was the "queue" (line) to get into the Anne Frank House.
...and people waiting to see the parade nearby.
Waiting in line.
While we were waiting in line, the parade started!
This parade is interesting and different because all the floats were on the canal.
We saw parts of the parade throughout the day.Actually, not really... I couldn't see past all the bodies in my way, so I had to hold my camera up really high, take a video, and then watch it on my camera to see what was going on... sad, huh!
Anyways, enough of that... here is the inside of the Anne Frank House:
We weren't allowed to take pictures in here so I didn't take that many because I was afraid of getting caught.One thing that struck me the most about the Anne Frank House was a video we saw of her dad, the only member of the Frank family who survived through the concentration camps, talking about his reaction after reading Anne's diary. He talked about how surprised he was at the depth of emotion and thought of her writings because Anne was usually reserved and quiet.
How tragic it must be to lose someone close to you in such cruel circumstances, and then realize that there was so much more to that person you could have seen and known.
Anyways, here was our next destination: the flea market.
Hash pops and cannabis seeds (drugs), commonly sold around Amsterdam.
It was really crazy walking around the city while the gay parade was going on. The music was loud and people were everywhere, dancing, drinking, smoking (don't even want to know how many different kinds of second-hand smoke I inhaled that day), sitting from the windows of the buildings... I felt overwhelmed and tired.
While we were walking around, it really made me wonder... why do people celebrate homosexuality? And by endorsing it in such a way and rewarding this type of lifestyle, isn't society sending out the message that it's not only okay, but even good and admirable to come out of the closet? You can imagine the potential danger behind this whole idea: young men who grew up never having a real sense of community turning to homosexuality for acceptance.. it's sad.After about 10 hours in the city, we all met to go back to our hotel.
We got really lucky this weekend because there were complications with our original hotel, so we got to stay in another, much nicer one!
We had an en-suite bathroom... WOW! I haven't had my own bathroom since I came here.
Tracey and I shared a room... we were seriously so happy when we saw it. Not even funny.
Later on at night, we went on a tour of the red light district.
I didn't know this about Amsterdam until I came to England and heard people talk about it, but the red light district is known for its prostitutes and easily accessible sex. Shady, right? That's why I made sure to come to Amsterdam with a tour group and not on my own..
Here it is..I was afraid to take too many pictures because our tour guide warned us not to get pictures of the prostitutes. He said one time one of the students in his tour group took a photo of one of the girls, and a bouncer came out and smashed her camera on the ground.
Also while we were here, I saw a female tourist take a picture of one of the girls... and the girl opened her window and started cussing out the tourist, calling her a lesbian and telling her to get away. I was really shocked.
Walking through the Red Light District reminded me of New Orleans and the one night my team and I went out to Bourbon St... but worse than that.
Amongst the adult bars, sex theaters (not completely sure what these are; don't want to know anyway), sex shops, and even a sex museum, I think the thing that shocked me the most were the "windows." Basically a window is a small room illuminated by red lights with a scantily clad prostitute standing inside trying to lure potential clients (aka lonely men). I guess another way to describe this is literally "window shopping for prostitutes."The tour guide told us not to feel sorry for the prostitutes because they make about 400 euros a day ($700), but I still felt sad when I saw them. It doesn't matter how much they make... how can you put a price tag on your dignity and self-worth?
Whenever I normally think of cafes and coffee shops, I think of these cute, girly places to sit down and enjoy a good book or have a long conversation with a friend. But in Amsterdam, a coffee shop is a place you go to to smoke or buy space cakes, which are brownies and muffins baked with drugs inside them.I went inside this one just to look around, but it smelled so terrible I left after a few seconds.
We just walked around the rest of the night and got dinner at this Italian place. But we were still hungry since we split only two pizzas amongst the five of us, so we got fries afterwards.
Fries are pretty popular in Amsterdam and are usually eaten with mayonnaise. Sounds kinda gross, right? You can get other sauces too, like curry and stuff...The sauce we got was good. It tasted like the "special sauce" from In-N-Out.
As if this entry wasn't long enough already, this is a video to sum up my day:
It's actually pretty boring... but I feel like things come alive more when they are captured on video.
I really liked Amsterdam for what it was to me: a culture shock. However, just after the first ten minutes I stepped into the city, I knew I could never live there. One day in Amsterdam was definitely enough for me.
