Saturday, July 16, 2011

Amster..dam

For this weekend excursion we practically all decided to go to Amsterdam. After some train difficulties my group made it to our hostel at 1am.. we didn't realize rooms were assigned on a first come first serve basis and our group of 5 was split into a 3 and a 2. I ended up in a room with six people already asleep, and there were 2 communal showers per floor. Things look sketch enough at night in friendly family neighborhoods, in this hostel it looked like something out of a horror film. Lets just say I slept with my purse in my arms that night. Honestly waking up the next morning I realized it wasn't that bad, the people were very friendly and completely normal which was such a comfort since we had to leave our luggage in the shared room. It took an hour and a half to travel into the city, much more than we expected but we made it eventually. Amsterdam is quite an easy city to navigate, and we meandered through the streets most of the day shopping and trying new pastries. I absolutely loved people watching there, it was such a diverse city with so many different things happening that boredom wasn't really a possibility. My favorite part was probably when we walked to the van gough museum and just layed out on the lawn in front of it and chilled for a while. It was absolutely perfect! And a close second was the next morning when my group went out to the beach since our hostel was so close to it. It was just really relaxing which was a nice contrast to how hectic the weekend had been. I can't really say I was sad to leave, it was definitely an awesome experience and I'm happy I went but I was ready to get back to quite ol Bonn!
Things to learn from this:
When booking a hotel/hostel: locationlocationlocation
Check when museums close, weekend hours especially because theyre probably different
Think about how you are going to get around
Check the weather, then increase the range by + and - 10 degrees C, it's bipolar
Bakerys are a great place for a cheap lunch
Unreserved seats are generally in the first car of the train
Thanks and Gig'em

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