The Grand Adventure- Amsterdam

Hello family and friends! I wish I could have updated more regularly, but I've been staying in hostels for the past 3 weeks and internet access has been sporadic and at times, expensive. Fortunately my current hostel has free internet, and I wanted to start giving an account of my travel experiences. It's absolutely impossible to go over everything that's happened the past three weeks, cause it's been a LOT. But I'll start giving summaries of where I've been.

We caught a cab at 4 in the morning the day we left and were at the airport before dawn. At that point there were only 4 other people with me. Our flight and everything went smoothly and we arrived in Amsterdam when we'd expected- to find it snowing, and hard. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of our visit there. It was bitterly cold and windy, the kind of cold where you don't even want to be outside, let alone outside waiting for public transportation that doesn't come when or where you expect it to, which happened quite a few times. My friend Christine and I spent a frustrating hour one day trying to find the Hop On-Hop Off bus around town. We saw it two or three times, driving away from us (This was after finding out that our transportation pass did not in fact include the river ferries, which was very disappointing). Tourist info told us that apparently it didn't have a set stopping point and we had to wait for it to drive by and flag it down. We tried that, too, for another 15 or 20 minutes and failed. By the time we gave up my hands (in gloves, in pockets) were so cold that they hurt. We ran into a nearby cafe and had pastries and hot drinks, after which Amsterdam was a little redeemed for us. Possibly the worst experience, though, was trying to navigate the night bus system. We ended up on the wrong bus, at the wrong stop, walking back to the hostel in the bitter cold late at night, getting more and more angry at each other (particularly the boy who had led us onto that bus). That was resolved by jumping into a random taxi that drove by, though. I seem to have good luck finding random taxis at the right time. We were so cold when we got back that we turned the hot water on all the way in the shower, crammed into the bathroom, closed the door, and let it fill with steam. It felt wonderful.

So, weather was not a selling point. Possibly the coldest spring break I've ever had....

Not everything was crummy about Amsterdam, though. We did find a couple nice cafes and the canals were gorgeous. It was just that the entire town felt like it had nothing to offer except tourism. Once you get the typical Amsterdam things that everyone comes for out of the way- finding a hash bar, walking down the Red Light District, and making a run through the Sex Museum- there isn't a whole lot else to do except buy wooden shoes, a tulip, and call it a day. So, while we were all glad to finally be out traveling, and the sights were beautiful, we were all happy to leave and vow never to come back after our couple days' visit.

Our next stop, Berlin, was INFINITELY better than Amsterdam and was pretty much amazing in every way. I think it was the universal favorite city for all of us. But I'll write about that later....

Love you all!

Helen