Grand European Adventure: Amsterdam, Netherlands

This is probably my last "travel" entry of the journey, so I better make it a good one. Amsterdam:

Our train from Brussels to Amsterdam was incredibly painless. We caught the 10:24 one which allowed us to wake up at a fairly decent hour and get breakfast (although, sadly, Belgians do not believe in waffles for breakfast) before making our way to the train station. The train ride itself was rather uneventful,. 2.5 hours of watching Belgium turn into the Netherlands (same greenery and frolicking farm animals- add more waterways) and we got into Amsterdam at about 1. We were easily able to find our hostel, conveniently located right between Chinatown adn the Red Light District and wew went in, ready to experience our Christian hostel. Once you got over the pamphlets on God, invitations to join prayer circles, and giant "God Loves You" and "Jesus" signs painted on the walls, it was a perfectly clean hostel in walking distance of everything (haha and with some friendly prostitutes next door). After we checked in, we headed out to this pancake place that the hostel recommended for lunch. And indeed the pancakes were delicious- gotta love these European countries with their breakfast food not for breakfast. Afterwards we played Dutch Scrabble (we used English words, but it was weird to see the different point values for letters [z's were worth 4 points] and different distributions of tiles) while enjoying some classic Amsterdam experiences. Afterwards we basically wasted the afternoon wandering around the city, people watching, and getting Thai food (A'dam isn't really known for its cuisine, but they have a lot of Asian places. And since we were right by Chinatown, it was really easy). We went back to the hostel around 7 and basically collapsed on our beds, exhaustion from 4 weeks of travel hitting us hard. I think our bodies realized that this was the end and all the adrenline stopped flowing. So I napped until 11 pm. And woke up, put on my pajamas and fell back asleep until 7 the next morning.

Despite the 12 or so hours of sleep, I still woke up exhausted. We grabbed the free (hot!) breakfast from the hostel and then made our way to the Anne Frank house to be there when it opened at 9. We went in, and even though the house was empty of all furniture, I still though it was rather moving. It made me want to go back and read her diary again. It would have sucked to be stuck in those rooms for 2 years. After AF, we wandered to Beijinhof (sp?), a quiet little courtyard where Catholics secretly prayed when they were being persecuted and off to Vondel Park to hang out with nature. Like I said, Laura and I were still really tired so after lunch, souvenier shopping and stroopwafel buying (delicious cookie things) we went back to the hostel for another nap (I don't think I've even slept so much in my life and have still felt so tired). After the nap, we did finally feel somewhat awake and decided to throw all travel seriousness away and instead of going somewhere cultured like the Van Gogh museum or the Rijkmuseum, we instead went to the Sexmuseum. Some of the exhibits were rather amusing and after awhile you just got really desensitized to it all (and with our hostel being in the Red Light District, we were pretty much already desensitized to it). After our humorous foray into the Sexmusuem, we returned to our favorite pancake house for some dinner and were back at the hostel pretty early to pack up for the final time.

Sadly the remaining travel did not go so smoothly. Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:20 but ended up leaving at 11:40 because there was this miniscule dent in the wing (the pilot could only see it when the light hit it just right) and it took 2 hours for the engineer to say, yeah that's a dent. But it's small enough to be within regulations. You can fly now. Pff 2.5 hours on a plane when you really really really want to go home sucks. But I suppose some technical malfunction had to happen somewhere on the trip and I'm glad it happened when I didn't really need t be anywhere afterwards. But eventually I did get back to Brighton and was very happy to see my bed, in a room that no one else was in.

Reflection on Amsterdam: A very good way to end this trip. We were really too exhausted to do a lot of typical sight-seeing things so it was good that we saved, for last, a city that didn't really have a whole lot of things we wanted to see. We saw some sights but mostly sat around and enjoyed the culture. A'dam is a beautiful,. 17th century city and I guess it just kind of confused me because of all the sex in the Red Light District and all the coffeeshops everywhere (and I mean everywhere!). Do I take it as a quaint European town or a progressive, really liberal city? I suppose you have to take it as both and that's part of the charm.