Here are 25 thoughts about my time in Amsterdam, all 9 hours that I spent there.
25. I love Amsterdam.
24. The Anne Frank house is a lot bigger than I imagined.
23. Amsterdam, considering how much of a tourist city it is, does not have a very good system set up for transporting or directing tourists. I waited in a 45 minute line to be told that I could take any tram to the center of town (except 26) or that I could walk. Then, when I noticed there were no signs pointing me in the direction for me to walk, I paid 2.50 euros for the tram ride just to find out where I wanted to go was around the corner and then a 5 minute straight walk.
22. Bikes are huuuuggggeeee in Amsterdam. And they don't stop for pedestrians. As I am not fond of bikes in general, this is not a practice I condone.
21. The canal water is refreshed and replaced every 3 days, which is why Amsterdam doesn't smell.
20. Amsterdam is built in an onion shape. This means that the roads are either really short or long and curved.
19. I went on a free 3-hour walking tour in Amsterdam. The tour company Sandeman offers it. The tour guides really know their stuff and have a lot of personality. They know exactly what toursists want to see and hear. Sandeman also offers free tours in Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Edinburgh, Hamburg, London, Jerusalem, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Prague, and Tel Aviv. If you are in these cities anywhere in the near future, you should definitely check them out. They are for people of all ages. The tour guides work on a tips-only basis so tip well!
18. Amsterdam is definitely a city to be taken on foot.
17. To get into the Amsterdam airport through customs and security with a trasfer is super easy. A guy glances at your passport and lets you through. There is no security.
18. Europe is expensive.
17. Almost everybody smokes and drinks and sleeps around. A lot.
16. For this reason, it's a great party city.
15. For this reason, it's also a place where it seems like people don't go anywhere with their lives.
14. I traveled alone pretty well for my 1st time.
13. The Dutch have a lousy sense of humor (meaning practically nonexistent).
12. I fell asleep on the train on my way to the airport from Amsterdam (hey, 3 hours of sleep in 2 1/2 days people!) . I woke up at a stop and the ONLY time I ran into someone who didn't speak English was when I frantically asked the people around me, "What stop are we at?" "Stop?" the teenage boy next to me asked with a quizzical and skeptical brow, as if I spoke not a foreign language, but a nonexistent one. I ended up getting off just to see a sign for a station I did NOT want. So I ran right back on. Turns out that the sign told of the next stop and that I had been in the right place. And then I preceeded to take the longest 10 minute ride out of a city of my life. I kept praying it would stop but the train chugged on. I passed windmills, cows, and a house here or there, but no city with a train stop. Finally it let out and I got on the next train back. Made it to the aiport with a little time to spare.
11. My lunch was relatively cheap. Mozzarella cheese, tomato, cucumber, and lettuce on a wheat baguette. Light, but filling and delicious. Along with my meal I had my first legal Heineken.
10. Amsterdam is located on marshy, inhabitable ground. The reason people moved there and made it a big city is to see The Magic Bread. This bread kicks all other breads' asses. This bread refused to be digested. And that is the wonder of The Magic Bread.
9. If your house leans backwards, that's bad. It means its foundation isn't built right. Waterfront houses naturally lean to the side so that's alright. And it's very Amsterdam to have your house built foward. In the 1700s and 1800s Amsterdam had a problem with flooding and people would try to store their food at the top of their house. So people built a pole at the roof to hoist supplies up because it was too dangerous to carry heavy boxes up tiny stairs. But the boxes kept hitting the side of the house on it's way up to the roof and breaking. So the people of Amsterdam built their houses leaning forward so this wouldn't happen. It took them a 100 years to realize that, if they built houses with longer poles that stuck out farther from the houses, the supplies would be safe. But that's the Dutch for you. Creative, resourceful people, but they always go the difficult route (they did settle in swampy unlivable land and developed it into a modern metropolitan city, now didn't they?)
8. My tour guide had the strongest Irish accent I've ever heard in real life. It was awesome! Less awesome - she preferred Amsterdam to Ireland.
7. A shockingly large number of Spanish speakers visit Amsterdam.
6. In 2006 it was declared illegal to sell both pot and alcohol in coffehouses. The mixture kept making people throw up in the streets.
5. It is common for drunk or high people to throw random people's bikes into the canal. There is even a special magnetic machine that goes around and picks up the bikes on a regular basis.
4. As much as people ride bikes in Amsterdam, you would think they would consider that their biggest luxury and buy really expensive, nice bikes. Nope. I would say about 1/3 were nice, 1/3 were average/relatively inexpensive, and 1/3 rusty and old.
3. Taxes use to be based on the width of the front of your house. So people built their houses really small so they wouldn't have to pay as much. They also didn't have to pay taxes on unfinished buildings so many houses in Amsterdam don't have roofs.
The bright pink house in the middle of the two other buildings in the picture is the thinnest building in Amsterdam.
2. The red light district is insane. It's like another world. Prostitutes chilling in windows, men openly propositioning them. Tourists unapologetically staring wonderingly at this process. Women strolling along with their 5 year-old daughters past the prostitutes as if there was nothing wrong with the picture. That part freaked me out a little bit - I'm old fashioned and think children should not walk around in the Red Light District. I had trouble wrapping my mind around how Amsterdam thinks about sex. It's cool to gawk at and people watch because it is so different from any world I've ever entered. But I'm a little too prudish to fully embrace the Red Light District as Amsterdam does.
1. Amsterdam is STUNNING. Just gorgeous. All of the buildings are built in the old style as if they're out of the 17th century. And with the waterfront just, sigh, I didn't want to leave. It made me wonder why I ever left Europe 4 years ago. Why would anyone ever leave? I don't know how I would have gotten on my flight if it hadn't been for the fact that I was on my way to somewhere cooler than Amsterdam.
Next up: Cairo!
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