The Netherlands

I know this seems a bit late, but I haven't been able to really get on a computer until now..so I need to finish telling you all about my 9 day break. After I left Dublin, I headed for the Netherlands. I wasn't sure if I would like it, I always imagined it to be a bit nasty. I am happy to say: I was very wrong. It was so nice!

There are beautiful canals everywhere and the city is filled with wonderful histroy -- sadly, I think a lot of that gets forgotten and overshadowed by the hype Amsterdam gets in America for their drugs laws, etc. If you go though, it is surprisingly easy to avoid things like that, and the city is really worth visiting.

The first day we were there we got up early(this was a pattern on the trip) and decided to go on a 3 hour walking tour of the city. It really didn't sound that like that much fun; I mean who wants to walk for 3 hours while a stranger tells you histroy facts, that for all you know could be entirely false..we decided to do it mainly because our hostel was a bit grimy and our main goal for the day was to find enough things to do so we only had to go back to sleep. The tour ended up being excellent. We saw so much of the city we wouldn't have know to go see, and if even we did know about things we couldn't of found it. Our tour guide was well informed and had tons of neat history facts to tell us about each of the things we went to see. One of the many things we saw on the tour was this house...

The house I am referring to is the red brick one in the middle..it may be hard to spot because that is the smallest house in Amsterdam. It is only a meter wide! And the man who lives in it is 2 meters tall!

The houses alone we neat to look at, a lot of them were crooked and leaned out farther at the top than the bottom, this was because (according to our tour guide) houses were at one time taxed based on the size of it. The houses were measured around the bottom, and taxes became very high at one point, so to avoid such high taxes people started building their houses at angles, and bigger at the top so they could have more room, but not have to pay so much.

Amsterdam is filled with canals and I have never seen so many bikes...more people bike here than drive, and probably walk. FYI: pedestrians do not have the right of way when it comes to bikes..bikes have the right of way over cars and people, if you get in front of them they will not stop, and if you get hit, it is your fault, and you will definitely get yelled at.

The main things we did was sight see, eat, and go to museums. The first night there my friends and I decided we would all go out for a long sit down dinner (this was largely done to avoid going back to the hostel). We went to a very traditional Dutch restuarant and were the only Americans, and people under 30, there. With whatever dish you ordered they brought vegetables, family style. I had stewed beef (which was their "speciality") and we all had tons of delicious vegetables, half of which were potatoes in some form. It actually reminded me a lot of the food we have in Austria. Despite my usual disdain of potatoes I really liked theirs. I had one glass of red wine and was too full for dessert, but the desserts the others had looked phenomenal. After we ate we were too full to do anything else so we walked back to the hostel and went straight to bed. This dinner was my "craziest" night in Amsterdam...apparently I am the worlds most boring 21 year old.

We wrapped up our Amsterdam visit with the Van Gogh museum. It was really expensive so I didn't want to go at first, but after I went I was so glad I did. Their were beautiful paintings, and a lot of neat history about Van Gogh and painting of artists that influenced him, and modern day ones his work has influenced.

* We had tried to find this I am Amsterdam sign, but had no luck...just as we gave up looking we happenned to stumble upon it after the Van Gogh Museum. My head is in the bottom part of the A, and the rest of our little travel group are in the A, between the A & M and in the M...but the people on top, the boys, aren't part of our group--they just semi-crashed our picture.