We arrived early Saturday morning and met Chris and Mel at the airport. There was some hullabaloo about the trains to the centraal (yes, that's how it's spelled) station not running or something and we were confused for a while, but eventually we made it there. Because of our delay, Kripa and Rachel (and Rachel's friend, Jairo, from the Hague) were already waiting for us at the Doubletree, so we only had time to drop off our stuff and grab some free cookies before heading out! COOKIE!
Before we headed to Amsterdam, we knew it would be COLD there -- like 10 degrees -- but we thought we were prepared. However, there are only so many layers of clothes you can wear and therefore we ended up stopping in somewhere every few minutes to warm up and have a drink. Also, the canals were frozen and we even saw people (very precariously in my opinion) skating on them.
It had also snowed, which I knew. However, I didn't realize Amsterdam was like the UK in terms of doing zero snow mitigation whatsoever. All of the sidewalks and roads were covered with slush and ice the whole time we were there, which made walking interesting. It also made my decision to wear chucks seem pretty stupid. When it's 10 degrees out, wet feet don't help :( I even considered buying boots while there, but the cheap in me just couldn't do it, so I came up with a better solution -- sock, plastic bag, sock! After this discovery, I was much happier :)
The first day we went to Begijnhof, a courtyard of old houses that is inhabited by elderly nuns. It's a bit random, but it was very peaceful. We also saw the floating flower market. Other than that and just walking through the town in general we didn't make too much headway because it was just so cold!! That night we went to an Italian place that had margherita pizza for 5 EUR -- oh yeah!!! Did I mention that I am cheap?
After dinner, we headed over to the red light district to check it out. It was…interesting? Crazy? Not exactly what I expected. It's basically house after house of scantily clad girls posing in the windows. When we walked down the main street, I was surprised at how attractive, old (as in not 14), and healthy they all looked. Once you go to the more secluded streets, the quality went down a bit though… They also had different themes and props. 'School girl' seemed like a common one and we noticed that most of them were wearing dark-rimmed glasses, but there were also girls posing in hair salon set ups, doctor's offices, etc. Jairo even took advantage of our confusion after leaving a nice warm coffee house and walked us right through one of the brothel buildings. It was crazy! There were just girls standing in all the rooms -- so weird! Justin was pretty pleased with himself that one of the girls tried to invite him in, but I reminded him that that's their JOB. Sorry no pics or the pimps would have beaten us up!
The next morning we had a bad surprise! Chris and Mel's flight had been cancelled for that night, so they had to leave right away! :( So, they got one day in Amsterdam, but at least it was a pretty good one? After they left, Jairo dropped us off at a breakfast place before heading back to the Hague. From there, Rachel, Kripa, Justin, and I headed over to the Van Gogh museum, which was cool, but 5 floors of the same artist is a bit much for me. Unless it's Dali. Luckily both Kripa and I liked all the brightly colored ones, so we were able to entertain ourselves :)
We then took some obligatory pics in front of the I AMSTERDAM sign, where there were some real punk kids throwing snowballs at all of the tourists trying to take pictures. Justin tried to get them in trouble and they eventually left, but they were not cool.
From there we went to the Anne Frank House, which is where Anne Frank and her family hid and were eventually captured by the Nazis. It was incredibly interesting, though also quite depressing. From there we thought we should lighten the mood by going to see something known as the Homomonument. We figured it should be good fun -- clearly a tribute to gayness should be bright and happy and over the top. However, it was probably the most dismal gay monument on earth and ended up being similarly super depressing because it was a monument to gays and lesbians killed in the holocaust. Whomp whooomp :(
To help improve our mood, we walked 1 mile in the wrong direction in absolutely frigid temperatures!! Oops. We had really wanted to try Indonesian food since none of us had had it before and we figured it would be good there because of the whole colonization thing. We went to 3 different ones that were listed in our guidebook, only to find that none of them existed, so we snuck into an Indian restaurant, since you can never go wrong with Indian… The food was actually pretty good, but then as we were paying the check, a mouse ran under our table…whomp whooomp :(
Dr. Rachel went back to the US early the next morning, so only me, Kripa, and Justin were left! We'd heard that the library was supposed to be cool, have good views, and it was only down the street from the hotel, so we went to check it out. It was very cool looking architecturally, but the best thing about it was the amazing cafe on the top floor! Seriously, it was like a food market in there!
After eating, I was quite insistent on checking out De Poezenboot, which I suspect translates roughly as Puss-n-boat, but who knows, I don't speak Dutch. It was highly ranked on Trip Advisor, so I thought why not? In the end, it was a small house boat with about 10 angry cats on it. There were a few out that you could pet, except you couldn't actually pet them because they were scared/mean. Actually, that's why they were on the boat, they are "unadoptable" and some people bought a house boat to keep them in. A bit random, but why not…
For lunch, we tried to get Indonesian again. Justin did some research and found a place, so we went there. However, as we approached, I thought 'this certainly doesn't look Indonesian' and it wasn't. Chinese. Ugh. Another Trip Advisor fail! Since it was well into the afternoon at this point, no other places were open and so we ended up eating at Wok to Walk, a Dutch asian rice bowl place that we know from London. It's good food, but not exactly what we were looking for! We topped off our visit with some time chilling at the Baba coffee shop and helping Kripa buy odd souvenirs and moldy cheese.
On the way to the airport, someone starting speaking to Justin and Kripa in Dutch, which happened many times during this trip, and which I thought was a bit weird. I, on the other hand, had no one speak in Dutch, but I did have some Spanish guy tap me on the shoulder and said, 'excuse me, sir, does this train go to the airport?' SIGH.
