Amsterdam

Amsterdam - red light district and marijuana. Nope, Amsterdam is actually a very cool city with amazing canals (way better than Venice), cool architecture, and lots of history. The Anne Frank novel shaped my view of Amsterdam and that's the side of the city that I love. You do smell weed everywhere, but it's not really a big deal.

Skinniest house in Amsterdam - just a tad larger
than the width of the doorway

We did a free walking tour on our first morning which was really great. We learned all sorts of things, like how the houses lean slightly over the street/canal and have hooks at the top so merchants could pull all their wares up to the attic for storage safe from rats and accidental flooding. We also learned that if there was a problem with the dikes, everyone had to drop what they were doing and fix it. If you were angry with your neighbor and couldn't work with them, they would chop your head off, just like that.

Make your own Magnum ice cream bar - mine had rose petals! Sarah had
strawberry sugar on hers. Definitely the coolest toppings ever.

The Dutch aren't famous for their cuisine at all, and chances are, you don't even know what they eat; I had no idea either. From what I gather, most of the people live on Chinese takeout, but we did manage to find some authentic (ish) food. Sarah had this mashed potato, carrot, and onion thing with one giant meatball. It was really good. I had a Canadian moment and voted for a dutch bacon pancake with syrup and powdered sugar, which was so delicious. We tried some other dutch food as well. Its really hard to describe, but one was a dense donut consistency that was fried in oil and tasted like raisin bread, and other one looked like a hot dog shape, but was a beef mashed potato and gravy inside. Sarah thinks that one was like southern biscuits and gravy packaged in hot dog form.

Us on a cool bridge

After two months in Europe, we're a little museumed out, but we did hit up a purse and handbag museum, which was really cute. It told us the history of the handbag back from the middle ages, and had purses from then all the way up to today. They also had quite a collection of handbags owned by famous people which were all Chanel and D&G and stuff.

Cute house in Volendam

Of course we went to the Anne Frank museum. There is always a huge line to get in there, but it is worth the wait for sure. It gives you the same sort of feeling that the concentration camp did, but not quite as strong. It really puts things into perspective, and you realize that this was for real, and real people lived there in hiding. In North American we don't really have the opportunity to get up and personal with WW2 history, so it really hits you when you see real physical remnants, not just pictures and stories.

Random storefronts in Amsterdam

Chances are, you have seen the blue and white pottery Holland is famous for called Delftware. We found out there was a museum, so we decided to go check it out. When we got there, we were informed that it was not a museum at all, but in fact, it was an "experience". A little unsure of what to expect, we waited at the bottom of a staircase outside the building for the doors to open. They did open, and we walked into a little pottery-making studio (or so it seemed). Being the only ones there, we didn't really know what to do, so we sat down on some stools in the middle and waited. Soon enough, a video starts playing, and we were told that we had time traveled hundreds of years into the past. The video proceeded to explain the history of Delftware and the process of making it. Throughout the video, little doors kept opening all over the room with demonstrations and such. It was one of the oddest museums I've been to, and it was quite the "experience"... We were a little weirded out as we left, but we learned some things none the less, so mission accomplished, I guess!

Amsterdam has a surprising amount of green spaces, and we really enjoyed spending some time in Vondelpark, which is quite large, and I wish we could have spent more time there, as its a beautiful park!

Sarah and her clogs

One afternoon, we went on a tour to do some cultural stuff like cheese tasting, watching a wooden clog-making demonstration, and walking down a lane with lots of old historical windmills. I'm not a huge fan of cheese, but Europe really knows how to make good cheese. I still don't like a large amount of it, but I really enjoyed little bits here and there. Sarah was really nice and bought some to share with her family - I'm not sure if she made it all the way back to Paris without eating it herself though! The wooden clog shop was really cool. It was interesting to see how they make the shoes, and I like how people still wear them. Too bad we don't have traditional wear like that! Sarah, being the shoe fanatic she is, decided she couldn't go home without adding some clogs to her collection, so she bought a pair and I really hope she wears them at random times at home because that would be great! Windmills - a very Dutch thing! The old windmills are very beautiful! We were there on a breezy day, and one of them was working. They used to be used to pump water out of canals and stuff, but now they have electric pumps for safety, and the old windmills are used more for manufacturing, I believe.

Epic green bikes

The best part of our time in Amsterdam was definitely the time that we spent with the friends there. They are amazing! We met some of them at Hambuhren early on in our trip, and it was really nice to see them again. We went to this little town on the coast called Volendam that was so cute! It was a really nice day, and we walked around, watched the ridiculous number of sailboats on the water and ate ice cream. We also had the privilege of having lunch and supper with some friends, and that is where we tried some of the Dutch food I talked about. At sunset, we went to the beach near Amsterdam and watched the sun go down while having appetizers at a restaurant on the beach. This was one of my favorite times in Amsterdam!

Sunset on the beach

On my last day with Sarah, we decided to see Amsterdam as you are supposed to - via bikes. In Bruges, biking was really fun and it was a pretty simple way to get around. Biking in Amsterdam is a completely different story. Its definitely way more scary to bike there than it is to drive in Canada. When you're walking, you have to watch out to make sure you don't get run over by a bicycle, and when you're cycling, you have to make sure you don't hit any people or cars, or get hit by people or cars. Plus, you have to navigate the city, which is a bit difficult even on foot. Needless to say we made it through the afternoon without crashing, so that was a huge success. 

Sarah takes the train back to Paris by herself :(
The saddest part of our trip!! I miss her

Well, that concludes Europe 2013, sadly enough! Hopefully there will be another Eurotrip before too long!