Grace and I arrived at Charles de Gaulle what we thought was 2 hours in advance for our plane, but somewhere along the way we mixed up the time and ended up being 4 hours early. The flight from Paris to Amsterdam was pretty much just take off and landing. I swear we were in the air for less than an hour, which was great because we had some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced! We arrived in Amsterdam Sunday evening and Grace's neighbor's parents were there at the airport to pick us up. They are incredibly nice people and live about twenty minutes outside of Amsterdam in a town called Huizen. They live in an amazing apartment with a view of a little yacht harbor. It's decorated with a very contemporary style. Lots of sleek white pieces of furniture, but also very comfortable. They are retired, in their late 60s, and so so cool. They gave us wine (the dad, who's name I can't quite pronounce or spell, sipped on some vodka, no big deal) and made us a wonderful home cooked dinner. Turns out that there are a lot of words in Dutch that sound very similar to a lot of words in Wolof, but other than that, the language is absolutely foreign to me!
Yesterday was Queensday, which is one of the biggest holidays in the Netherlands. It's a day to celebrate the queen, whether that be by singing and dancing for her, wearing orange, or riding (dancing, really) in a boat down one of the many Amsterdam canals, drinking beer. I've never seen anything like it! Grace and I went into the city in the late morning, and literally every street was packed with people. It's the only day all year that people are allowed to sell things (like a garage sale) in the Netherlands, so everyone has tables set up with things to sell. There's beer and food everywhere you look. Loud music coming from bars, bands, boats (unintentional alliteration). On top of everything, the weather was fantastic. Apparently the first real sunny day of the year.
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| Crowded street with cool old buidlings |
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| Packed boats and bridge on a canal |
We didn't have much of an agenda for the day. We wanted to see the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum, but mostly we just wanted to walk around. We ended up walking to find the Anne Frank house, but we didn't go in because the atmosphere didn't seem quite right (we're going back there tomorrow). We did, however, go to the Van Gogh Museum and it was amazing. That was one talented and interesting man! I wish I could go back and spend an entire day there. After the museum we decided to make our way back to the apartment. It was about 4:30pm. It took us until about 6 to walk to the train station (partly because it was very far away, partly because we had to wade through hordes and hordes of increasingly drunker Dutch thirty-somethings). We managed to buy tickets and find where (we thought) the train would come. We got slightly confused, asked one of the train station workers for help, and he told us which train to get on. Turns out it was not the right train and it took us about 30 minutes in the opposite direction than we wanted. So we got off, took a different train back to Amsterdam, and finally made it home by 9:30. Crazy crazy. The train was PACKED. People were sitting on the luggage racks above the seats! When we got home, our wonderful hosts ordered us a pizza for dinner. It was very nice of them.
Today we went to a tulip garden called Keukenhof. It was really cool! More tulips than I ever knew existed. We walked around for quite some time and took loads of pictures. The weather wasn't quite as nice as it was yesterday, but the rain held off for the most part. When we got back from Keukenhof, we walked around the harbor by the apartment and then sat in the bar of a fancy hotel and had drinks and coffee. They ordered us a typical Dutch snack called bitterballen, which is like a croquette I think, a little fried ball of creamy potato and meat. It was pretty good! Now we're just resting up after a long day of walking around.
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| Tulips! |
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| ...tulip... |
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| ...tulip... |
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| ...tulips!! |
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