I survived Amsterdam...

The weekend was quite the adventure beginning with leaving our place at 5:45 am for our flight. I had stayed up late the night before finishing a paper, so I fell asleep before the safety presentation and didn't wake up again until after we landed!

We spent the first afternoon in Amsterdam wandering around the canals and different squares. We did wander through the red light district just to say we had been. It was kind of similar to Bourbon street until you got the the actual red light zones. Very interesting to say the least! Then late we went on a boat tour of all of the canals and it was beautiful to see the sights. 

I stayed in my first hostel ever! The four of us girls actually stayed in the "hotel" part of the hostel in a private room but I figure that still counts right? Saturday morning came a lot earlier than expected, especially when the pigeons who had landed on the window sill of our open window and started cooing at 6 morning and scared me and Emily half to death. The stairs in those dutch buildings are something else! The stairs up to our room seemed more like a crooked ladder. They were incredibly steep and hardly wide enough to put your whole foot on!

We toured the Heineken beer factory. The factory tour was great with lots of entertainment and even a simulated ride... and beer tasting of course! While we were at Heineken we meet a guy working there who was from Philly and talked to him for a bit. Later that afternoon we were walking down the street and someone called out "hey girls!" We turned around and saw him at a pub with his friends, small world!

The highlight of the trip was our bike tour through the city. Amsterdam is a huge bike city. There are more bikes in Amsterdam than there are people! They even have a huge bike parking deck next to the train station.

Our bike tour guide was the epitome of what you would image when you think of someone from Amsterdam. Born and raised in Amsterdam, she was unashamed to talk about anything and everything Amsterdam related, and was complete with dread locks, scraggly teeth, and blew bubbles in the air as we peddled down the street. We went all over the city on our tour. Sadly, I didn't end up with many pictures because my biking skill are not quite at that level of multitasking yet.

We rounded out the weekend on the rainy Sunday (which I had brought no rain gear for and was completely unprepared) by taking the trolley every. We went to a well known pancake place (really more like crepes) and had a wonderful brunch. We had to scrap the original plan of going to she the flower market due to the rain. However, we did go to Van Gogh Museum which was really cool. Thanks to Emily we spotted Kristen Wiig while we were there!

Thank you to my Uncle Chap who gave me lots of wonderful tips for the weekend! They were so helpful!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Then it was back to London, which for now is Home sweet home!