First day in AMSTERDAM

Woke up to my alarm a little before 9am very tired and unhappy about the little bit of sleep that I had just received. Whatevs. We got ready and went downstairs for the free hostel breakfast which was a modest buffet, but good. They had granola and yogurt which makes me happier than happy—it’s been ages since I’ve had a granola yogurt parfait. So, Amsterdam makes me happy because it’s obvious that there is a substantial hippie-like population. There are a lot of vegetarian restaurants and organic food places, and every little breakfast place has granola. Mmmmm granola. I was happy, I miss my little hippie places. At breakfast we downed some coffee and perked up for a day of exploring. We grabbed a map of the town and were off. It was a gorgeous day, cold, yet nice. It was in the upper 40’s and partly sunny…and it was supposed to rain the whole time we were there! What luck. On the airplane ride the night before we planned out what we were going to do each day; we really didn’t plan many concrete activities so as to leave a lot of room to truly explore the city. Our only plan for Sunday was to go to the Van Gogh museum. We explored the central area of Amsterdam for awhile getting lost a lot but not really caring. Amsterdam is amazing. It’s so peaceful and tranquil and clean. It’s very obvious that this is a chill, artsy, bohemian, yet posh place to live; there are barely any cars or motorcycles—everyone rides bikes. And when I say bikes I don’t mean the modern bikes we’re used to. No; people ride old school 1960’s and 70’s bikes of many colors with baskets usually filled with some sort of collection of flowers or books. You don’t rent cars when you visit Amsterdam, you rent bikes. Talk about your lack of pollution. Speaking of flowers, Holland has a thing for tulips. So there were countless flower markets mostly selling tulips of all sorts. Love it. I was also a fan of the water--all of the main streets of Amsterdam have canals that run between the streets. So you’re always crossing bridges and whatnot. It all just adds to its tranquility. People ride boats around a lot, and a lot of people live in these adorable little houseboats right in the canal! I love it. Also, Amsterdam is a major city, but you would never know it. It’s so, well, quiet. People are so laid-back and calm and nobody crowds the streets or anything. You cannot help but always be at peace there. It’s the perfect European town, it’s the only place that I’ve visited where I could see myself living. I can just see myself owning a little bookstore, having a little place on the canal, drinking coffee on the terrace, and growing tulips. What a life. It may seem that the tranquility of the city may be due to the marijuana legality. But no, it’s really not like that. It's a natural sort of peace that's pretty hard to describe in words. Actually, marijuana is not legal in Amsterdam, it’s just not criminalized or something like that. Anyways, on our walk we admired the city and ventured into many coffeehouses and shops. It took us awhile to find a coffeehouse where we felt comfortable enough to hang out for awhile. We first stopped at this really awesome, chill coffeehouse/bar called Lost in Amsterdam. We were the only ones in there and we were greeted by a super nice girl bartender with her cat…yes, the cat was chilling on the bar! There are cats everywhere in Amsterdam in so many businesses and such. I mean, cats chilling in bars! Amazing. This bar was decorated with a sort of Indian theme with low tables, colorful couches, tapestries, and hookahs. We sat on a couch and scanned a menu...we were a bit confused. She asked if she could help us, but the menu didn't really tickle our fancy. So we just hesitated awkwardly, said thanks but no thanks, and then left. So we walked some more and found another bar that seemed appropriate. So we walked into this bar and they asked for ID. You have to be 18 to go into a lot of the bars, but most places don’t really enforce it. I didn’t have my ID with me, but it’s pretty obvious that I’m over 18. However, the dude there was being strict so we left. Note to self: bring ID. I was not happy about it, I mean, I just turned 21! I’ve not been faced with being restricted from something due to age in forever. It felt weird and made me feel young. So strange. Finally we found a little café/bar playing reggae music with a big picture of Bob Marley on the entrance. This looked pretty good. We walked in and checked out the menu. We had questions and whatnot and the bartender was more than nice and willing to answer any question. In fact, all of the people in Amsterdam are so freaking nice and helpful. We chilled at the bar awhile trying to perk up (we were quite tired from lack of sleep and lots of walking) and watched a tennis match on TV. The tennis was captivating. After about 45 min we headed out to walk some more. We got a bit lost, but somehow found the famous Sex Museum. Now, we hadn’t planned on going to the Sex Museum until the following day, but since it was there we decided why not. We went in, and man, that was an experience. It’s basically multiple levels filled with old pornographic paintings and images from the 1700’s on. There was some kinky stuff going on all over the world throughout the years. I mean, primitive pornographic photography from the 1800’s…pretty graphic stuff. People were doing the same crazy stuff they that I never imagined would have occurred back then. It blew me away. There was also some gross stuff, too, like photos of intense S&M and animal sex. Think women with elephants. What??? There were also video booths (we saw couples come out of one, ew), primitive sex toys and dildos (think elephant tusks), a sex symbol area (lots of Marilyn and Rita), and animated statues that were hilarious. It’s also really awkward to walk around with a group of strangers and look at pornographic images. It weirded me out, for sure. We were in that crazy museum for about an hour or so and then left kind of baffled about the whole experience. We soon grew hungry so we walked around until finding a cute café/bar/restaurant that had a mostly adult crowd. This place had great ambiance and reminded me of a lot of the restaurants in Highland Park with its mahogany walls and furniture and intricate menu. They had a pretty substantial pancake menu—as many of you are familiar with, Holland is famous for its pancakes. You know, Dutch pancakes. To all you Highland Parkers out there you are probably very familiar with the Dutch pancake at Walker Bros. That’s exactly what they’re like—they’re huuuuuuge taking up the entire plate and very thin (almost like a crepe). They are then filled with anything and everything. Katie ordered and apples and honey pancake. I was debating between the chocolate banana pancake and a tomato mozzarella pesto sandwich. They have tomato mozzarella sandwiches everywhere! I am loving Dutch food, I must say. I finally settled on the sandwich because I didn’t want to deal with all of that sugar—I wanted a real meal. There’d be plenty of time to try the Dutch pancake. Our food came finally and it was delicious—Katie thoroughly enjoyed her pancake while my sandwich left me oh so satisfied. After eating we decided to check out another coffehouse. We wanted something sweet so we luckily found a coffeehouse that sold really awesome pastries. We both decided to give the vanilla muffins a try, and they ended up being quite good. Then we were off to the Van Gogh museum. We found out that the best way to the museum, which was quite far away, would be by using public transportation. Amsterdam’s got a great cable car system. Another reason why Amsterdam’s so great: the cable cars! It gives the city so much more character and so much less pollution. I reiterate, Amsterdam is so clean and pollution-free! People barely even litter! After much cable car confusion (the system is kind of hard to figure out) we found the route that goes straight to the museum. We hopped on, paid 1.60 euros, and took the 20 minute ride to the museum. On the way we got a great mini tour of the parts of Amsterdam that we would never get to. Anybody, I mean anybody would love this city. One day at dinner a week before I told everyone about where I was going for Semana Santa. Marta got really excited when I said that I was going to Amsterdam—she said that it’s her favorite place in Europe! Now, Marta is very conservative Catholic and definitely does not partake in any sort of the famous Amsterdam recreation. She kept raving about how amazing the city is, the flowers, the people, the architecture, the water, etc. She was so right. We finally got to the museum, waited in a 15 minute line, paid the 10 euro entrance fee and went to town. The museum had many of Van Gogh’s works in order starting from his earliest, and then many works by his disciples. It was awesome, except for the fact that they only had 2 famous paintings: his bedroom, which confused me since I also saw that painting at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris (perhaps there are multiple?), and one of his still life depictions of the sunflowers (but not the complete, really famous one). Needless to say, as cool as the museum was, it was a bit disappointing. Katie and I however both gradually became captivated by the art work and ended up inadvertently splitting ways. I literally read every single caption intently. On the way down at the beginning of our visit we spotted Julia and Emily from Cornell and Rachael from UofM sitting on a bench. Emily was basically sleeping with her head resting on her hand. Julia and Rachael approached us. They had been in Amsterdam for a couple days already and were heading to Prague the next day. They were really tired and getting ready to go back to their hostel to nap. They were staying at a hostel right behind ours so we decided that we should meet up for dinner that night. Julia told us that she had heard that the Indonesian food in Amsterdam is the best. Amsterdam has any kind of food you could ask for: any kind of Asian food, southeast Asian, Mexican, Spanish, Argentinian, American, French, Middle Eastern, Cuban, English, Italian, even Tibetan! Anything. There’s also a Chinatown adjacent to the Red Light District that has a crap-ton of Asian food including Indonesian, Chinese, Tibetan, Jabanese, Thai, etc. So we decided to meet them at their hostel at around 8 and take it from there. We then parted ways (they were headed back for a much needed nap) and we continued on our way. Sleep was sounding kind of good, actually. We had been literally walking all day and were exhausted. Anyways, we had split up for a good hour and a half when I completed looking at the paintings. I had exhausted that museum…I mean, I dissected it. I couldn’t find Katie, didn’t want to waste minutes on the phone quite yet so I sat on a bench near the entrance and waited. I was perfectly content just sitting there and people watching. After about 15 minutes or so Katie came down the stairs…she had been sitting on a bench upstairs waiting for me. It was funny. Oh us. Then we headed out and grabbed a cable car. I was too tired to figure out where to go or what car to take, and Katie seemed to have it under control, so we hopped on one and didn’t even have to pay. Sitting in my seat and watching Amsterdam fly by kept me alert and content. It was getting dim out as the sun had gone away and sunset was pending. As I was looking out the window I noticed that the buildings started to look different (more modern and apartment-like). We rode the car to the end of the line to realize that we had taken the wrong line (it was the same line we took to the museum except it was going in the opposite direction of where we wanted). So we had a little panic of not knowing what to do, but then figured out that there was a cable car going back the way we came so we boarded it, didn’t pay, and rode another half hour back to the center of town. It was pretty confusing, and finding which stop to get off at was confusing as well. Let me just throw it out there that Katie and I got lost in Amsterdam at least twice a day everyday. The streets are really small, confusing, and all look the same. Also, the street names are so weird, I can’t even pronounce them. They all start looking the same to me since they all have weird names, so I didn’t know any street names or anything which was quite a challenge, especially on public transportation. Dutch is a strange language, man. Once we got our bearings it was about 6:30. We wanted to go back to the hostel and nap before meeting the others for dinner, but this plan was looking dismal. We were so exhausted and hungry that we just decided to get dinner and then pass out. We really wanted to try Indonesian food, so we wandered around finding a restaurant. Indonesian restaurants are basically everywhere so we knew that we’d find one. We passed a bunch, but each one was pretty pricey, so our journey continued. We got lost a couple times, too. We ended up walking for a good hour and a half before deciding to give up on the whole reasonably-priced Indonesian thing and just eat somewhere. We went to this Dim Sum place and collapsed in our chairs tired and sore from so much walking and confusion. We ordered a couple Dim Sum dumplings (sooo good) and some noodle dishes. Katie’s dish had tofu in it…I had not seen tofu since December! Wow, Amsterdam. Hehe. After a satisfying meal we walked back towards the hostel which took some time since we still did not understand the street system. On the way home we decided to make a quick stop at a coffeehouse to buy some dessert. We stopped at a really awesome café/bar called Baba, it had a huge multi-armed elephant picture out front. They had a bunch of treats to choose from, but we ultimately settled on buying a their huuuuge brownies. We got back to the hostel around 9 and decided to take a nap for an hour and then explore the nightlife. Katie set her phone alarm for 10:30. The man who slept in Katie’s top bunk was there sleeping. He was about 60 years old. This man was so strange—we always saw him either sleeping, reading a newspaper in bed, or downstairs in the bar connected to our hostel smoking in front of the big screen. Seriously. He did nothing else. This man really baffled us, it’s like he never left the hostel. He just slept, read, and smoked. What’s with that? Crazy hostel people, I tell ya. So we passed out a little after 9. Katie’s alarm went off at 10:30 which she immediately turned off. We were way too tired and exhausted by the day that we just decided that sleeping was the best idea. At around 2:30am Katie and I were woken up by random people coming into the room (standard hostel experience). I couldn’t believe that I had been sleeping all that time! I then went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face and got back into bed…but couldn’t fall back asleep. I was thirsty and restless. At around 4:30 I gave in and went downstairs to the bar and got a glass of water. There were people there hanging out still. God I loved my hostel. Then I headed back upstairs and lied in bed another hour. I don’t know why I couldn’t fall back asleep. I finally started counting sheep and that relaxed me and I fell asleep. I had a great first day in Amsterdam, I was falling in love with the city.