Christmas Vacation - Amsterdam

So. I think I have got some time to write now, the internet hasn’t been working that well lately.
This town has been crazy the last few days. We got 8 inches of snow. All the roads iced over and the shops closed. School also closed, for 3 days! There were many snowball fights, and people were out taking pictures all over town. I think this place only gets snow one time per year, if that (and has not seen a snow like the one we had since 1987! So… Now most of the snow has melted and things are starting to return to normal. I have got a lot of exams this week, some of which had review sessions last week that are now nonexistent. Oh well, wish me luck!

So my Christmas vacation was pretty awesome! My good friend Matt flew on over, and we toured Europe a little. So I already wrote about what we did the first couple days in Aix en Provence. So let me pick you up where the plane landed in Eindhoven.
So we got off the plane and had to walk down steps onto the runway and then into the terminal. Every plane we took was like this. None of them had connecting walkways into the building. Small time compared to ATL. Lol. Now we are in Eindhoven which is an hour and a half away from Amsterdam by train. And we had this assumption that everyone speaks English in the Netherlands, but this is not completely true (the signs are definitely not in English). But we did luck up and meet two 20 year old native girls who spoke our language. We buddied up with them to get to the train station and they helped us learn a few things in Dutch. They also showed us the right train to Amsterdam, very helpful. But sadly they were going to Rotterdam. So we had to say our goodbyes. Amsterdam here we come!

Our hostel is called “The Flying Pig, Uptown”. We got there at about midnight and had to go downstairs to the Bar to check in. We got all that taken care of and put our stuff in the room (4 sets of bunk beds, and 5 sleeping people). So we wanted to hit the town the first night so we went exploring a bit in the area of Leidsplein . We saw our first coffee shop, “The Bulldog”. It is pretty crazy what they can sell legally in this country. Lol. We also found ourselves a good charwarma place. We ordered a couple with the sauce Blanche and fries, and headed back to the hostel. We ate them downstairs in the chill out room, and starting meeting the other backpackers. There were people from all over the US and the world. Even met a couple French girls. So, we talked with these people for a couple hours and found out some cool stuff to do while we were going to be in Amsterdam. So we now had a plan, but we also wound up sleeping in everyday. The first day we walked all around the city and tried to find this Free Tour that we had heard about. It was supposed to be really good. But we could not find where they were meeting for the life of us, so we just kept exploring the town and got a good feel for the layout.

We were able to visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. That was a really good experience to get to see and feel the history. We climbed the secret stairway and got to walk in the room they hid in for so many years. I am so glad that we got this chance. Also we visited a cathedral and a really interesting square. Begijnhof is a square that is completely surrounded by building, and you would not know it was there if you didn’t see a small doorway that led into it. Luckily I got pretty good eyesight. But it was interesting being in the middle of all these buildings. And a lot of them were not exactly standing straight up; I think something about all the water had to do with that.

So we finally found the tour on the last day and we stayed with it for about 30 minutes until we decided it was way too cheesy and ditched. So we hit the red-light district for a bit. Lol. You can find any type of girl, or man, you might want. But don’t worry we didn’t waste any money there. I can’t believe that this is a legal profession here. The girls pay a lot of money to rent out these windows, so in tern the clients have to pay at least 50 Euros for just about anything. And we definitely didn’t come with that kinda cash.

So we ended our trip with a nice walk thru Vondel Park. Just relaxed and took in the scenery and people. After this we went to this place called FEBO. it is a store where the walls are all like vending machines, but for hot portable foods that are made fresh and cheap. so we ate, and then it was off to Schiphol Airport to leave for London!!!