Amsterdam:
We arrived in Amsterdam at 9am and as we got off the bus we were immediately met with the challenge of finding our way to our hostel without being able to speak dutch. This wasn’t truly difficult until we got off the city bus as the people in the bus station and the tram drivers spoke fairly decent English. The problem was the (very nice) gentleman at the tram station told us the wrong stop to get off to begin with and we got off earlier than that because another stop started with a similar name. As we walked for a while we came across a nice man who (i assume) was from the UK as he spoke only english, he pulled out his GPS and told us to get back on and take the same (wrong) stop a few stops down. After getting off this stop we walked for about an hour and a half (in the wrong direction) until we were both very annoyed and encountered our first argument. I stubbornly called over a taxi and paid a ridiculous amount of euros to get a ride two city blocks back where we had walked past.
Once we had the city transportation figured out it was fairly easy to find our way around, that night we ended up going to get some food, burger king of course. Then we wandered down to the red light district, explored some coffee shops, bought some souvenirs and found our way back to our hostel.
The next day we got up early, checked out of our hostel and locked our bags in their bag storage for the day as our train for Germany didn’t leave until 10:00pm that night. We got to go to the VanGough Museum and see some of his earliest artworks and sketches. After that we went to the Anne Franke House, which was life changing. To see first hand the conditions she lived in during such a dark part of history was sad but very important to see in-order to stop history from repeating itself.
Amsterdam was pretty amazing but if i were to go back it would be a guys trip, So much more to amsterdam that i didn’t really see or explore however both types of trips are fun i’m glad i got the site seeing trip out of the way if the occasion does arise for me to be able to return.
For my own benefit i will rate each place on a scale from 1-10 (10 being good) on the following subjects. This is very much a generalization so don’t take offense if you’re from these places.
Amsterdam as a whole: 7 - small amounts of history but a very intriguing city none the less, you can “see” all you need to in one day really.
The Dutch Language: 5 - Very “Throat-y” i’m not a fan of a language that sounds like you’re trying to hock a loogie every time you say a word...
The attractiveness of the people: 8 - The local people we’re fairly attractive
Expensiveness: 4 (pretty expensive) - 30 bucks to eat at Burger king... Not cool...
Sights to see: 8 - the fact that it’s all on water puts it at a 7 on its own for me
Food: we didn’t really try any traditional dutch food so i can’t rate it, i know, i know... my bad...
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