Amsterdammed by bike

I arrived in Rome Monday afternoon.  After spending a solid two hours looking for the hostel, I eventually found it… Only to be told me I actually didn’t have a room.   For the next 24 hours, I was homeless.  I slept in the airport at Rome before returning to the train station the next morning to book a ticket to Amsterdam.   I had decided that, since tickets to Croatia are cheaper next week, I’ll go to Amsterdam this week.  Going to Amsterdam was far from what I thought I’d ever be doing during this trip, but I don’t regret it.

I was eventually able to book an overnight train from 6PM Tuesday to 9AM Wednesday in Paris.  From Paris, I’ll take another train to Amsterdam.  Everything went smoothly.  Up until when the air conditioning stopped working.  No one in the train could sleep.  Most people hung out in the hall way where the air was slightly cooler.  And in the hallway of car 085, I ran into Jennifer, the Parisian who wwoof-ed with me in Florence.   It’s a small world.

The train arrived in Paris one hour late.  Because of this, I missed my train to Amsterdam.  I took another not long after.

In Amsterdam, I easily found my way to the hostel, that’s really an old school hotel.  The hostel is run by a coffee shop.  In Amsterdam, coffee shops are more like smoke shops.  The room and the wash facilities are pretty grimmy, but Amsterdam accommodation has very low standards.  But that’s easily forgiven.  Amsterdam is an awesome city!

I met up with Keven Kennett, my brother’s friend who’s also in Amsterdam, and we went walking around the city.

Beautiful night out.

We walked around the old part of city, weaving through the Red Light District and Chinatown.  Amsterdam is completely different from anywhere else I’ve been to in Europe.  It’s like its own little planet.  Rules that apply elsewhere don’t get applied here.

The next day, Kevin and I rented bikes and rode through the countryside just outside of Amsterdam.

Kevin, left.  To get to the countryside, you have to take a two-minute ferry.

It didn’t take long after we docked to find the countryside.  We didn’t really know what we were looking for, but we kept following a sign with little beach drawings on them.  It also didn’t take long for us to get ridiculously lost.

There were a lot of bridges.  The trails constantly cross over the rivers.  The park doesn’t seem really popular.  IT was totally deserted.  It was a little eery once the storm clouds started to roll in…

The windmill was the only landmark for miles.  At our absolute most lost moment today, our only hope was to get a glimpse of the windmill so we’d know where to go.

I think we’re going to hit up the RLD tonight.  Tomorrow, we’re going to go to the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum and a few other Amsterdam sites.  They also have the Museum of Erotica and the Cannabis Museum.  Only in Amsterdam.  Until next time,

🙂 Julie