Spring Break: AMSTERDAM

Alright so I have returned from Spring Break in one piece (and with all of my valuables which sadly is more than I can say for some of my friends who encountered some pickpockets)! That alone makes it a success, but I'm happy to say that everything went pretty much as well as possible and I had an AMAZING time. Blogging the entire thing would take about as long as break itself (which was 11 days) so I'm going to separate it by city. First up: AMSTERDAM.

My flight from the Florence airport left about 2 hours after my scheduled Italian midterm so I had to book it from the exam (which I clearly studied for extensively rather than looking up places to eat and go on spring break.. errr) to the airport via taxi.  Of course that got me there in plenty of time to sit for over an hour (I still can't get used to airports so tiny and un-rushed).  After an uneventful flight I finally landed in my first non-Italian city! Unloading the baggage appaaaarently takes an hour in the Netherlands and that combined with finding a shuttle service to the hotel put me about an hour later than I had informed the friends I was meeting that I would get there. They had welsh phones and I had an Italian phone so there was no way to contact them. When I got to the hotel I was informed that I had juuuust missed them by about 5 minutes. Since the hotel was in a very safe and crowded area I took a little stroll to see if I could find them and lo and behold I spotted them in the window of a crowded bar. In true sorority girl fashion (yuck) I screamed and jumped up and down, only to realize that the bar was so crowded because it was FULL of guys watching a football (read: soccer) game. Slightly embarrassing. It was SO nice to see my Colgate friends though- I was with Mandi, Carolyn, and Loretta for this part of my spring break trip.

Carolyn, Mandi, and Loretta!

The next day we woke up really early (around 9.. I can see my parents rolling their eyes at the label "really early") and head off to fit in as many Amsterdam activities as possible into one day.  Our first stop was Anne Frank house. The 20 minute walk to the house was gorgeous. Amsterdam is full of beautiful canals and cute little shuttered houses. Most of the ground floors are cute little boutiques or bakeries and even in the colder weather (it was actually pretty mild and pretty while we were there) there were flowers in bloom all over.

Anne Frank was incredible but really sad at the same time. We saw the extremely small rooms that multiple families hid in and the quotes from Anne's diaries juxtaposed with the tiny enclosures made the whole thing seem so real and so heartbreaking. I hadn't read the diary since I was about 13 but after seeing the house I want to re-read it again. Her father, the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust, worked to turn the house into a museum not only to keep the memory of his family alive but also to teach subsequent generations about the horrors of the Holocaust. The four of us agreed that the museum was sad but completely worth the visit. After leaving the house (and realizing we got there just in time because the line had tripled while we were inside) we headed for a slightly happier experience: pancakes.

the best apple pancake ever

 The Pancake Bakery is possibly one of my favorite places in the entire world, and I wish I were kidding. We all got something different to share and everything was unbelievably good. Little did I know that I would be partaking in pancakes (which are really more like crepes) multiple times over the break... but Amsterdam definitely took first place.

Amsterdam Sign

Our next stop was the Van Gogh Museum. Along the way we saw the "I Amsterdam" sign which we found to be a real letdown.. so much smaller in real life. Van Gogh made up for that though. Most of his famous works are in major museums around the world but this museum had tons of his less-famous paintings and sketches. Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists aesthetically and I really enjoyed seeing so many of his works in one place. The final "museum" stop was at the Heineken factory. This is clearly a really touristy thing but we had a good time walking through the steps of how to make beer and obviously enjoyed all the free tastings along the way.

Carolyn and I at the Heineken Factory

We wanted to make it to a club in Amsterdam on Friday night but got a little lost on the way to dinner-- all the canals look alike and literally ALL of the times are one syllable away from one another... Leidenschlaat and Leidenwied look the same in the dark... By the time we found a place to eat- and enjoyed our huuuuge steak dinners- we were pretty tired and weren't up for clubbing. We did explore the city a little more, it had a really fun energy at night. Our walk included a little peak into the Red Light district (ooops, sorry parents) which was pretty sketchy but something we clearly had to do since we were there. Finally, we went back to Hotel Kap absolutely exhausted but pretty pleased with our Amsterdam excursions.

Next stop: Hasselt, Belgium for Sensation White.