I haven't posted in a while because I've been really busy. This weekend, 10 friends and I rented two cars and drove to Amsterdam, despite not having any knowledge of the language on the roadsigns. That said, everything went really smoothly. We drove through Gent, Antwerpen, and Utrecht, and it took about 2.5 hours, though it wasn't a very long trip distance-wise.
I uploaded a new album with pictures that you can see here: http://picasaweb.google.com/TigerColby/Amsterdam02?authkey=Gv1sRgCM2JxYjt-dia1AE#
I'll kind of narrate them for you (I've captioned them as well. After getting into the city, the cheapest place to park was at the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium, site of the 1928 Olympics. Here is a link with the interesting history of those Olympics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Summer_Olympics From there, we took a city train into the city center.
Once we were in the city center, we found a hostel, and a room with 10 bunked beds, which worked out perfectly. Amsterdam makes New Orleans seem like a church. People smoke marijuana everywhere. Prostitution is legal in the famous red-light district. We didn't realize that we were actually staying in the red-light district until nightfall when the lights came on. It's really crazy-- there are prostitutes in booths in the windows of the buildings, and they try to entice you to come inside. It's really hard to describe the craziness of the city.
Amsterdam is built with canals that intersect the city every two streets or so-- the city has over 100 canals. We took a boat tour of the city, which was really neat. After the boat tour, we went to the Anne Frank House Museum and saw the trap door and secret room where she hid.
The buildings in the city are beautiful-- there's the famous Rijksmuseum, which looks like a palace and houses the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer. There's the Royal Palace where Queen Beatrix lives. This morning when we left the city, there was a marching band playing outside the palace, which was pretty cool. We also saw the Heiniken Brewery.
There were a ton of Americans in the city. Everything was expensive, because prices are jacked up in the touristy areas. The food there was much better than here in Lille. Amsterdam is famous for their pancakes and french fries.
Anyways, we saw so many things this weekend that I really can't remember them all, but enjoy the pictures!
I uploaded a new album with pictures that you can see here: http://picasaweb.google.com/TigerColby/Amsterdam02?authkey=Gv1sRgCM2JxYjt-dia1AE#
I'll kind of narrate them for you (I've captioned them as well. After getting into the city, the cheapest place to park was at the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium, site of the 1928 Olympics. Here is a link with the interesting history of those Olympics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Summer_Olympics From there, we took a city train into the city center.
Once we were in the city center, we found a hostel, and a room with 10 bunked beds, which worked out perfectly. Amsterdam makes New Orleans seem like a church. People smoke marijuana everywhere. Prostitution is legal in the famous red-light district. We didn't realize that we were actually staying in the red-light district until nightfall when the lights came on. It's really crazy-- there are prostitutes in booths in the windows of the buildings, and they try to entice you to come inside. It's really hard to describe the craziness of the city.
Amsterdam is built with canals that intersect the city every two streets or so-- the city has over 100 canals. We took a boat tour of the city, which was really neat. After the boat tour, we went to the Anne Frank House Museum and saw the trap door and secret room where she hid.
The buildings in the city are beautiful-- there's the famous Rijksmuseum, which looks like a palace and houses the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer. There's the Royal Palace where Queen Beatrix lives. This morning when we left the city, there was a marching band playing outside the palace, which was pretty cool. We also saw the Heiniken Brewery.
There were a ton of Americans in the city. Everything was expensive, because prices are jacked up in the touristy areas. The food there was much better than here in Lille. Amsterdam is famous for their pancakes and french fries.
Anyways, we saw so many things this weekend that I really can't remember them all, but enjoy the pictures!
I think being in Amsterdam would scare me, but I'm glad you're having fun :) Are you in Europe for a study-abroad thing?
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