I left my heart in Amsterdam....

The story of Amsterdam, long awaited I know... But here it is...
So, we (Esther, Kim, Bre, Mel, Sharon, Alexis, Susan and Tim) had a flight at 4 in the afternoon from Prague straight to Amsterdam, a short 1 hour flight. While we were in line to board, Esther ran into a girl she knew from her school and we ended up talking to her friends and I met a girl from CSU which was pretty cool. Oddly enough, we have mutual friends and I probably would have ended up knowing her at some point if I had stuck with business since she is a business major. Anyway we got to Amsterdam and were planning to meet Esther's roommate from home there in the airport. She was meeting up with us from Spain and was supposed to get in 1 hour before us. It turns out she missed her flight but had no way of letting us know. We searched the airport for 1 1/2 hours before giving up, figuring she would hopefully meet us at the hostel. We found out later that she missed her flight and came in the next day.... So we got on a metro that took us to the main train station and into the city. We got off and began the walk into the city center which was nice, down a busy street with plenty of touristy food places and what not. We checked into our hostel, Shelter City Christian hostel.... Ironic because all the weed we smoked was not very Christan.... We dropped off our bags and went in search of the first coffee shop in sight, we ended up at the Jolly Joker and bought our first joints and had hash coffee. Cheers to Amsterdam!

First high picture :)

Later that night we went to the Irish br that was across the street from the hostel. We took a few roomie love pictures too.....

                                                              I love these silly girls :)

Later we went back to the hostel and crashed out after what ended up being 8 hours of traveling. The next day we got up and rented bicycles.... What an adventure that was! So bicycling in Amsterdam is unlike anything I have experienced in terms of its prominence as a form of transportation rather than just leisure. Amsterdam has a population of 750000 people who own over 600000 bikes... it is a city built with so many forms of transportation in mind. There is a bike/smart car/vespa lane, a car lane, a bus lane, and a trolley/train lane.... all on one street in some places... see below...

Smart car (it must have a go-kart motor??)/bike lane

Pedestrian cross walk on the left-bike crossing lane with  its own lights on right

A large intersection- lanes(from left to right) train, bus, car, smartcar/bike/vespa, pedestrian

 

There were bike racks all over the city like this, 1000's of bikes everywhere!

So trying to ride a bike here, let alone trying to lead around 5 stoned people on bikes in a place I've never even been was a bit stressful at times. In the bike lane, there is no stopping, its literally like stopping in the middle of a highway, you will cause an accident... You have to pull over and get out of th bike lane entirely. We saw a collision while we were riding, a guy just plowed into a server at an outdoor/patio kind of restaurant and she was carrying a tray of drinks and they all came crashing down on top of her but we had to keep going so we just saw it happen and her fall... It was crazy. We rode around for awhile and then decided to split up since Kim was missing all day... Esther, Alexis and I decided to go to the Anne Frank House and managed to find our way over there and go through it. My first impression was that the house was alot bigger than I thought. I assumed it was a small space, granite they had like 10 people or something like that living in it too... The stairs in it were located behind a bookcase that was installed in front of the stairs in order to keep it more secret and the stairs were almost straight up, more like a ladder...

Later that day we walked around and saw how beautiful Amsterdam was. Its a city full of canals and cobblestone streets. Exactly the place where I want to be. I love being surrounded by the water and having it as such a prominent part of the city with the bikes constantly buzzing around, boats and boat taxis drifting by, and motor scooters whizzing by it was just a whirlwind of everyday life and people getting from place to place. We got very lucky with the weather, it was sunny every day and nice at night so we were really fortunate not to be freezing at night as we get later into autumn.....

We went shopping after that then met Kim, Bre and Mel at the library. This library was near the train station and has a cafe on the 5th floor which looks over the whole city and the canal.....

Incredible Amsterdam at sunset

The next day we went and did the Heineken experience with a couple girls from our program that we ran into the night before. The brewery was cool, though it was less of a brewery and more of an interactive kind of museum... Later that day Alexis and I went to the Marijuana Museum which had some funny historical weed PSA's which I thought were so funny

Today's headlines... tomorrow's despai

The "Marijuana girl" - 'she traded her body for drugs, and kicks!' lol

My favorite. Just the whole thing cracks me up lol

The next day Esther and I got up early and took a bus to Brussels since we had one way tickets to Amsterdam so we figured we had to start the journey in one direction..... That story coming soon-stay posted... Until later