Amsterdam!

Made it to Amsterdam. I am in love. Seriously. 9 hours on the bus from Paris was totally worth it. This city is just incredible—nothing has changed about the layout of the city since it was first set up in the 1600s. Famous for its “coffeeshops,” Redlight district and other festivities, Amsterdam is so much greater than all of the stereotypes it’s known for.

I was hesitant about whether or not I’d like Amsterdam, but honestly I’d say it’s probably my favorite city I’ve visited in Europe. Quaint, cute and traditional, I just can’t get enough of it.

Indonesian food is really famous here, so I went out with Kelly and Stefani and later met Thao, Emily, and Brittany at a famous Indonesian restaurant called Kantjil en de Tijger on Saturday night. It was expensive, but totally worth it. Dessert was the best—mango papaya ice-cream with fresh fruit and real whipped cream. I’m salivating all over again.

Amsterdam is such a cool city, but incredibly difficult to navigate, as I would find out later today. There are more bikes than cars here. And salting or sanding the streets when it snows is simply unheard of. Instead, you sort of slide around through the snow. What’s cool is that it’s not all slushy and gross like the way snow gets in the U.S. It just sort of gets patted down by millions of footsteps so you can’t even see the sidewalk or roads. It’s magical.

Clearly I was using my best judgment today when I decided to put on my tractionless Nine West leather boots this morning. I spent the day skating around down the streets in the snow. And I only nearly fell twice! Bike riders here have their own lane—or more like an ice luge—and stop light. A tram runs all over the city down the middle of the street.

We took the tram to the Tropenmuseum—an interactive history museum of all of the former colonies of Holland like Indonesia and Suriname.

I took the tram with Kelly, Stefani, Sue, Alexis, and Stephanie towards the Rijks Museum. We wandered around one of the main boulevards before stopping at a small convenience store for lunch. We walked along the canals and stopped for gelato. The BEST vanilla gelato I’ve ever had. Yes, Doug, even better than Nice.

The Rijks Museum was pretty cool. It’s famous for the Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings, including Rembrandt’s famous “Night Watch.” The five of us took the typical touristy pictures by the "I amsterdam" giant letters outside of the museum while some feisty, misbehaving "Hollandese" children (totally made up that word) threw snowballs at us. It's ok, I threw them back and nailed one kid in the head. Score!

We were given “directions” to make our way back to the hotel either on foot or by tram. I decided to save a few euros and walk back with Kelly and Stefani. Since I had the map, I appointed myself the navigator.

Epic fail.

We ended up getting lost in Amsterdam for about 2 hours. I’m sure I’ll look back by the end of the semester and laugh. We had dinner tonight as a group at some restaurant near the hotel? Pretty good food—an Indonesian chili soup and eggplant lasagna.

Overall it was a pretty incredible day. Tomorrow I’m headed to the Anne Frank House, doing some shopping, and hopefully meeting up with Paulie, Amanda, Scuba, and Caitlin and some other people from the SU Madrid Program.