Amsterdam!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I'm back in London now, but it was SO GREAT to be back in the states for Christmas, even though I didn't get to see as many people as I would've liked! The schedule was quite tight, unfortunately. More on the trip home in a later blog, though. I’ve been incredibly busy this past month with school, traveling, Christmas, etc., so I haven’t had a chance to update the blog in a while. Therefore, I thought I’d do a couple of back posts!

The first weekend in December, Jen, Terry, and I traveled to Amsterdam for a fun-filled weekend. We had a blast despite the gloomy weather! It rained almost the entire time. Amsterdam is a really great city. It has an unbelievable canal system, so we mostly traveled around by boat. I have hundreds of pics from the weekend, but here are a few.

Here's me and Terry on our first night outside one of Amsterdam’s famous “brown cafés”…




For the few days we were there, we managed to get in a ton of touristy stuff. The usual… museums, tours, shopping, eating, boozing, etc. This pic was taken right before we got onto a canal boat on our first morning in Amsterdam.

Like I said, the weather was really not great!! The following shots were taken from inside the canal boat, thus the raindrops. Here’s a shot from the boat as we traveled the canals. You can see some of the many houseboats that line the canals…


And a few more…




Jen and I on the boat…

On a side note, my hair was really not working with me the entire weekend because we couldn’t get my UK hair dryer to work with the adapter (Jen wisely gave up early and wore her cute hat). The hotel hairdryer looked like a vacuum and literally just emitted warmish air.

Back to the tour. Here’s Jen in front of the controversial Amsterdam opera house (the Dutch think its too large and nontraditional looking, apparently)…

For all you art lovers, this was Rembrandt’s house when he lived in Amsterdam…


Terry digging into our meal at the Sea Palace, where we gorged on Chinese food.

Later that night, we had an unexpected (for us) encounter with a cat who wanted to sit with Terry.


Apparently Dutch people LOVE cats, they were everywhere!!

Sunday was another productive day, and we were back on the boats! Here’s an outside photo of the Sea Palace, where we had eaten the night before.


The Rijskmuseum was really outstanding, filled with Rembrandts and other famous Dutch and European artists and artifacts.



We had lunch at a modern artsy restaurant next to the museum…

After lunch we went to the Heineken Brewery, where we were very happy to get out of the rain!

My "artsy" photo for the weekend…

After the brewery we hit up the Van Gogh Museum, and after that we were all tuckered out.

Our last night in Amsterdam, we went to a fancy traditional Dutch dinner.



And then, our last day, of course it stopped raining! This is me in front of Anne Frank’s house before we toured it. It was the highlight of the trip for me. It was incredibly moving to be in those tiny rooms where Anne and her family hid in secret for so long, and then to see her actual diary.

Here is a shot of Central Station, which was directly across the street from our hotel. We had a great trip overall, and I hope you got a little taste of Amsterdam if you’ve never been!

p.s. In case you’re wondering how we got by without speaking any Dutch, it was quite easy. Everyone spoke English! I mean everyone… bartenders, canal bus drivers, tour guides, museum workers, waiters, etc. We were very grateful!