Destination #15: Amsterdam, Netherlands
We were glad to escape Barcelona after our ordeal. At this point, we were pretty much done with traveling. I kept reminding myself that this is a once in a life time trip! Unfortunately, the airport lines, lugging our bags across town, and the language barrier proved to be overwhelming. Amsterdam welcomed us with rain! It was pretty gloomy as well. When we deplaned, we struggled to navigate through the gates, baggage claim, the arrival hall. It felt like LAX! We waited 45 minutes for our bags and spent another 30 minutes looking for a SIM card. When we finally got to our hotel at around 9:30pm, we were told that they were overbooked and had to relocate us to a sister hotel down the street for a night. It was NOT a good start to this trip! But rest assured this was the end to our string of bad luck and mishaps.
The next morning, we woke up to a sunny day! It was about 70F and I was definitely happy to be back in the mild weather. We relocated back to our initial cute boutique hotel and were glad to hear that they upgraded us to an executive room and included breakfast as part of our stay. Our first must do in Amsterdam was no museum, park, or canal. It was laundry! We were almost a week overdue. Fortunately, there was a laundry place about 5 minute walk from the hotel. It was pretty reasonable, 20 Euro for 8kg of clothes. We dropped it off and headed over to a cute cafe called Sweet Cup down the street. The coffee was good, internet was fast (so I can finish up setting up my new phone), and there was even a mild-tempered overweight basset hound that came out and greeted us when we sat down. Ah, the small things that make us happy :) We headed over to Soup En Zo, grabbed two bowls of soup to go and sat down by a canal to enjoy the serenity of Amsterdam. There's a calmness in Amsterdam that is hard to explain. Maybe it's the countless number of bicycles bustling the streets instead of cars and bikes. Or maybe it's the lower density of people in Amsterdam compared to other cities in Europe. Or maybe everyone here is super friendly because they're super high. Whatever it is, we were at peace.
In the afternoon, we paid my uncle Gogh a visit to check out his modern art museum. I would say that this is the best museum that I've visited during this entire trip. The museum was well laid out with stories about his upbringing, adventures, and struggles juxtaposed with the artwork he created during that phase of his life. Crowd control was good so it wasn't too crowded and there weren't any Chinese tourist flags around. Yay! For dinner, we had rijsttafel which is essentially Indonesian food served in small dishes. This was my favorite meal in Europe. Haha! I love just all the different spices used in each dish and all the different variety of food. Now that we are back in a safe environment, needless to say we went Poke hunting! There was plenty of Magikarp in Amsterdam for obvious reasons and we managed to evolve one to a Gyarados! :D
The next day, we went to the Rijksmuseum and really enjoyed ourselves there as well. We saw the iconic Rembrandt painting "The Night's Watch". It was a lot bigger than we expected. I never knew that there were so many great Dutch painters. When I think about a country famous for its painters, I think France. Visiting the Rijksmuseum definitely changed my perception. We spent the rest of the day strolling around all the hipster neighborhood in Amsterdam. There were countless good coffee shops around town. We stopped in one of them and that was the rest of the afternoon. ;)
The highlight of day 4 was definitely the canal tour. We learned about the history of the canals and the different neighborhoods in the city. The canals were built in the 17th century to connect over 90 small islands! Today there's over 1500 bridges in Amsterdam and the city itself isn't even that big! Pretty sick. We saw a pride flag over the Westerkerk church which paints a good picture on how the culture has evolved through time. People here are progressive, modern, and liberal. They have a pretty good welfare system as well and it's evident because we didn't see any homeless people here. Not a single one!
All in all, I think my favorite city in Europe is Amsterdam! We really did enjoyed ourselves here. I could live here! One day.. :)
Paris next!
