Final Fall Break Post

Some of us on the "Iamsterdam" letters

AMSTERDAM. HOLLAND. The final leg of our fall break bonnanza. I'm going to try to keep this post shorter than the other fall break ones mainly because I'm getting tired of all this blogging. Amsterdam was great. Plain and simple. It was quite different than the other two cities, whole new architectural style and had canals EVERYWHERE. Our hostel was right in the heart of the city, which was great. However, the rooms were real small, honestly like being back in the dorms. Plus, we had to walk up three stories worth of VERY NARROW stairs to get to our room. It was real trecherous. But anyways, Amsterdam.

Day 1) Arrived Thursday. Real tired, so we napped until the afternoon. Then we more or less just wandered around town. Amsterdam was really cool. Just the whole city and vibe of the place, I really liked it. The city is planned out in kind of a curvy way, it's super hard to describe. But it's really neat with all the canals. Here's a link of a map of Amsterdam http://tinyurl.com/Amstermap . Again, we didn't do a whole lot Friday. Just got accustomed to the town, wandered around, etc. Friday night we checked out a couple bars downtown which were a good time. Had a couple Amstels and Heniekens, which are brewed either in or near Amsterdam. Also, for dinner, we had our first Wok to Walk experience. This place was great, we went back one time each day. It's basically an Asian Chipotle. You picked your noodles / base, then added pretty much whatever you wanted in it, and topped it off with any of their delicious sauces, then it was all stir fried together. Delicious.

Canals galore

 Day 2) Day two was also one of the best days of the trip. We slept in a little bit, then decided to rent bikes, bike around town, and eventually we eneded up at the zoo. It was an absolute blast. It was only 10 euros to rent bikes for the entire day. So me and the guys I was with met up with some other girls from our villa that were there and biked around town. I highly recommend it. It was nice because we got out of the city center a little bit, and saw some quieter parts of Amsterdam. Amsterdam is also a super biker friendly city, so we had no problem getting around whatsoever. Here is a picture of some penguins at the zoo.

Our Bikes

We also found ourselves at Wok to Walk yet again for dinner. It was a great decision to go in for round number two. Then Friday night was our club night at Amsterdam. It was again a lot of fun. Ton of people there, and it was a three story club which was pretty ridiculous. Lot of good music as well. End of day 2. ONE MORE THING. I finally had POFFERTJES. These are really good, little dutch pancakes smothered in powdered sugar and butter. I used to get them all the time in Pella, especially at tulip time. I had them twice on their trip, and they were great both times

Poffertjes!

Unreal

Day 3: Day three was a lot more low key / touristy I suppose. We got up somewhat earlier (10ish) and went to the Anne Frank house. This was the annex that she spent her time in hiding in. It was very moving and quite somber. It was also quite informative, and we had the opportunity to see pages from her original diaries. Definitely a must see in Amsterdam. Then, we moved on to one of the city parks, that had the big IAMSTERDAM letters. Get it? I Amsterdam. I AM Sterdam? Funny business.  After climbing on the letters with the little kids and taking photos, we moved on to the Van Gogh Museum. This was great because it was a completely different genre of art than what I've been used to seeing in Florence. Van Gogh was quite talented, but also extremely insane. Still, got to appreciate his art. Then for dinner we went to an Argentinian Steakhouse, which was so-so. They honestly have them everywhere in Amsterdam, so we figured that we had to try them. We literally got dragged in to one of the steakhouses by one of the owners. A whole slew of them came up to our group and tried to get us to go to their restaurant. It was ridiculous. The one we went to was subpar, so obviously I had to go get some late night Wok to Walk. We didn't do much that night either, just drank casually at the hostel and then went out and walked around town. POW, end of fall break.

The Anne Frank House

Typical Amsterdam

All in all Amsterdam was a blast. There was some super uncomfortable / ridiculous parts of Amsterdam (I'm looking at you red light district) but otherwise it was a great time. Fun Fact, we saw Johnny Knoxville in the Red Light District one night. Anyways, THE END OF FALL BREAK. Off to Venice with the parents. Bye