Amsterdam, the Netherlands Part 1

A few weeks ago I ventured to Amsterdam along with a variety of other folks: Kara (who you may remember from my entries on Athens and Madrid), Erin (from Edinburgh), fellow “intern” Steph (from Lucerne), and her friend Mikele who joined us from Heidelberg.

It was sort of a random grouping, but we had a lot of fun (and saw a lot of stuff). Steph and I flew in from Geneva bright and early on Friday morning and met up with Erin who had arrived the previous evening. Mikele soon arrived as well and we met up with him before doing a little exploration, lunch and a canal boat tour.




For the Amazing Race fans in the audience: the floating barge of thousands of parked bikes the contestants had to search through this past season. Bikes really are all over the place in the city. Pretty crazy.


Statue of Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch”


A totally radical statue of an alien smoking up that would be right at home in the mid-90s


The city’s seemingly ubiquitous marijuana culture spills over to the flower markets


souvenirs... my better taste prevailed and I passed (though it would’ve made for some great herbal tea jokes)




The Rijksmuseum which features plenty of Rembrant (including the “Nightwatch”) and Vermeer, though being under construction, we only got to see a portion of the collection



Kara joined us Friday night and she, Erin and I saw Jimmy Eat World (more on that next post).
On Saturday we started out taking another free walking tour (same company as London and Edinburgh) with a pretty amusing tour guide. We ended up missing the group after lunch, so we went off on our own and ended up finishing the day at the Van Gough Museum. Kara and Erin left for The Hague to see another friend that night and the three of us remaining in the city had dinner at the Pancake Bakery which was pretty amazing.


National Monument


East India Trading Company


Steph, Kara, me and Mikele in front of the Heineken Brewery (which is currently being renovated so we couldn’t tour it)


The whole crew (with Erin in the bottom left corner) enjoys StropWafels (a hot waffle sandwich thing with syrup in the middle).
I look kind of scary in this photo, but it’s the only with all 5 of us, so whatever.

Sunday brought a day-trip to Enkhuizen, a small shipping village that may (or may not, according to my Dutch friends) represent the quintessential Dutch town. The weather was gorgeous the whole weekend and this day was no exception, though I’ll post those photos in a separate entry.

Soon, it was time for most everyone to head home except me (I stayed through Monday afternoon), so I decided to rest my weary legs and went to the movies. The next day I visited the temporary home of the city’s Stedelijk Museum for modern art and did some browsing (I suppose it doesn’t count as shopping if you don’t really buy anything) before it was my turn to head to the airport.


Nemo, the science and technology experience (didn’t go in, but I’m guessing it’s something akin to COSI)


view down a hallway at the Stedelijk Museum’s temporary space


and because the girls were doing it and it wasn’t touristy at all, I decided to pose in these wooden shoes

All in all, it was a nice trip to a beautiful city. More photos to come in a couple future posts.