There And Back Again...Part 1

Je suis très désolée pour ne pas écrire au cours des deux dernier semaines. C'est parce que je me rendais a Amsterdam, Paris, et Londres....
Oh wait I'm not in France anymore, I'm just too cultured to speak English anymore. Let's try again. 


I am very sorry for not writing over the past two weeks. This is because I was traveling to Amsterdam, Paris, and London. 
Traveling aka backpacking across these three countries was beyond amazing. I will attempt to describe each place in three posts.


First, let's start of with Amsterdam. 


The adventure began with a 6am flight via Aer Lingus. Katie, Callan, and myself fell asleep on the plane before it even took off. To our disappointment we were woken up by the stewardess only an hour later to find that we were in Amsterdam. This was a little bit confusing as we thought the flight was 2 hours until  we realized we crossed a time zone. 


After the initial confusion of which train to take where and how to get a map we eventually found our hostel. Located in the Red Light District (where the prostitutes are) we were pleasantly surprised with our hostel (Not because of the prostitutes). The hostel was clean, quiet and our first free breakfast was pancakes. If you are  headed to Amsterdam check out Shelter City Christian Hostel.  


The first day we explored the city by taking a walking tour. We also took a boat cruise around the canals. The canals were very beautiful but I managed to sleep through the boat cruise...I wasn't surprised the rocking of waves is very soothing to me. If there wasn't bats in the boathouse at home I would sleep in the  Fountain (or maybe soon the Lyman) all the time. 

A Canal in Amsterdam

During our time in Amsterdam we also visited the Anne Frank house and Vondel Park. The Anne Frank house was just inspiring and of course, emotional. Vondel Park was nice. In the park we walked by a group of toddlers playing field hockey...yes, toddlers like 3 year olds, I was impressed. 


Probably one of the best parts of Amsterdam was something we just stumbled into to. As we were walking back from a yummy lunch at the Pancake Bakery we saw all these hipsters dancing on the Homomonument. They were wearing T-shirs that said "Party Rock" and "Sorry for Party Rocking". Katie recognized one of the head dancers from America's next top dance crew so we stuck around to watch.
We thought it was just some dance group but the unbelievable happened. Far East Movement and LMFAO showed up in a BMW convertible. We were watching the new music video for their new song "Live My Live". It was so funny hearing all the dutch kids, one minute they would be speaking dutch the next they were like "Everyday I'm Shuffling".
If you don't believe me check out the video...

Another one of my favorite parts of Amsterdam was "stroopwaffles". Stroop is the dutch word for syrup. So a stroopwaffle is two crispy waffles with syrup in between...they are so good. 


One of the cool things about Amsterdam is transportation. Everyone has a bike and that is how literally everyone gets around. Being into environmental stuff I found this fascinating, a whole city on bikes. According to our tour guide there is more bikes in Amsterdam than there are people. 

Lots of Bikes in the Jewish District

All in all I enjoyed Amsterdam. You might be wondering some other things...yes I did see prostitutes and people smoking pot. Believe it or not these cultural differences give you perspective. I did not participate in the traditional Amsterdam activities but merely observed and still had an excellent time. Above all the city is rich with history and there is a lot to learn from it's people.