After a long weekend of traveling, we started off another week of more traveling. It is only Tuesday and we have already been on, or planning on being on, every form of transportation possible in Holland, except for the bikes(more to say about those later!). We left Bangor Monday morning on the train to London and made about 3 stops before we got on buses to finish the rest of the trip. When we arrived in London, another Central student met us to get us to the Vandon House, which is where the Central students studying in London stay. To get there, we used the "tube" system. That is one confusing system if you don't know what you are doing! We finally made it, had some dinner and got to bed pretty early as we had to get up by 2am to catch our flight. After our small nap, we walked about 30 minutes to the bus station. Then road the bus an hour to the airport. We caught our plan after getting a light breakfast in the airport. The flight was only 45 minutes, but a combination of me being sick this past weekend, being up at 2am, not having eaten much in the past 72 hours, and the flight, I did end up getting sick in the last 10 minutes of the flight. I felt completely fine afterward and was able to make it through the day without anymore problems! Once in Holland, we rented a car and drove into the heart of Amsterdam. We finally found the tourist center to ask about where to stay and what to do. They were very helpful and got us a nice hotel to stay in as we needed a place for the car. We headed out in the right direction but all of our maps ended about 3 or 4 streets too soon. So we drove around for quite some time, only to realize we had driven by the backside of the hotel once before... But we made it, got settled in and then headed out to explore. We bought a 48 hour pass that lets us have unlimited use of the public trams and buses, free admission to most museums/attractions, discounts on many restaurants, and a free canal tour. Trust us, we are taking full advantage of this! Just this afternoon, we have used the trams multiple times, been to at least 4 or 5 museums or attractions, been to one of the discounted restaurants, gotten some free coffee, and are planning on going on the canal tour tomorrow afternoon or evening. Finally, after eating supper, having been up for 18 hours already, we were ready to head back, get showered up and get ready for bed. Tomorrow we plan on heading out of town a bit, to Haarlem, and a few other small sites to get the rural view of Holland along with a few other sites here in Amsterdam and then finally the canal tour.
We have found that Amsterdam is for sure based on tourism even though the locals don't seem to like or care about the tourists. Everyone here rides a bike. You will see from the pictures that there are bikes everywhere, including a bike ramps like you would see a car ramp in the US. The only catch is that bikes have the right away. It doesn't matter if you are walking or in a car, if they go, you stop. There are bike paths everywhere and it is more of a hassle looking to make sure you won't get hit by a bike rather than a car or the tram. I'm surprised that more people are injured due to crazy bikers!!! The weather here is also kinda odd. Like Iowa, it can be one thing one hour and something else another. The only difference, is that is can be different every minute. We seriously saw sun, rain, snow, clouds, sun, snow, sun, snow again, and over and over. You would literally walk into a building, turn around, and it would be a completely different weather outside. I think you will get that a bit by looking at the pictures. Other than that, just having to deal with the language barrier is the main thing. It is sure nice that Maurice knows a bit though, he has sure helped out in that aspect of this trip! I will have to say, that even though I may not understand what I am saying, I am getting much better at pronouncing things in Dutch. Hopefully by Thursday, we will all be able to say that we have touched up a bit on our Dutch!
I'm sure we will have plenty more stories to tell tomorrow so we will try to keep things update! ~Anna
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