Wednesday, November 16, 2011

AmsterDAM THAT WAS A GREAT WEEKEND!

First off, title cred to Ashley Alman, who is much more creative than I.

This past weekend Kate and I took a lovely little romantic get away to Brussels and Amsterdam. We landed in Brussels, got slapped in the face by the cold and surprising number of Italians traveling to Belgium, and eventually found our way from the airport to the bus station to the metro to our hotel.

Ok, when we first got to Brussels Kate and I looked at each other with just a "why the heck did we come to Brussels, this is so random" look, but thankfully we were more than pleasantly surprised. We also became foodies on this trip, starting with the most incredible lunch at a little pub restaurant. After lunch we walked around to all of the chocolate, lace, and touristy stores and then around the square with the Grand Palace. We kept seeing this statue of this little naked boy, Manneken Pis, peeing all over the place and we probably asked 5 different people hey, what's the deal with the peeing kid? but no one could tell us. Luckily my girl Sara Weir told me when we were skyping last night. As legend has it, a wealthy merchant was visiting and his son went missing so all of the local merchants and community helped find him and the dad said he would make a sculpture of his son doing whatever he was doing when he found him, which I guess involved his son who had stripped naked and was peeing somewhere? Nevertheless, the statues were everywhere.










At this point we were just wandering around the little streets but we wanted to get out of the cold and then we found... The Beer Cave. It was the coolest place. They had over 2,000 beers and the bartenders all knew so much about beer and there were people from all over the world just sippin on some brews. If ever you are in Brussels, I hope you too will stumble upon The Beer Cave.






The next day we took the train to Amsterdam and were so pumped to be there. It gets dark really early, so by the time we got there the sun had already set. Once we had dropped our bags off at our hotel, we went to this awesome indian restaurant. Apparently there are a lot of indian and indonesian immigrants in Amsterdam so we were told that they have some great indian restaurants, and they weren't kidding. We met up with some Barcelona API friends who had come for the weekend too and got to see Amsterdam at night, with all of the canals lit up.







The next day we had to check out of the hotel and head to the boat! When I was finding our hostels, there were a bunch of house boat hostel options and Kate and I couldn't resist. It was called the Avanti and with our bags stuffed in the corner, really only one person could be standing at a time. We met the captain and owner of the boat too and he told us that school groups will rent it out for a week for field trips at sea. What?! Where were my sailing field trips? Just kidding. But then every summer they take the boat on a 2 month trip wherever they want! Kate and I decided to write a traveler's food diary and travel all around the world on a house boat. Who needs grad and law school? We're gonna get ourselves a boat.




That day we went to Nemo, a science museum pretty much like The Science Place on crack and definitely meant mostly for kids, but we figured we're just kids at heart really. We went on a canal cruise after around sunset which was so beautiful (how romantic) and got to see a fraction of over 100 canals and 1000 bridges in Amsterdam. Thai food this night. YUM. And later the house boat rocked us to sleep.









We got up and went to the Anne Frank House on our last day, which was really moving. It was Otto Frank's wish that the house not be furnished as it had been so the rooms were empty but they had pictures of how it had been set up and the way the whole tour was done was really cool. Then we went to the Van Gogh Museum, which I just really really loved. I'm all about those sunflowers, you know.

So our flight was at 6. We had left our bags at the house boat so we had to get back to the boat, get our bags, get to the train station, figure out how to get to the airport, and then get through security. It was 3:30 when we left Van Gogh, and we didn't want to have to get a taxi so we stole a tram ride, sorry Amsterdam, but I guess our pay back was that it took forever. We finally got to our stop, and were power walking back when Kate's legs cramped up, diva, so I left my purse with her and ran the mile back to the boat, and you all know how much I love running... I strapped her backpack on my back, mine on the front and, looking something like a turtle with a beer belly, ran back. Come to find, the train runs every 15 minutes and only takes 10 minutes to get to the airport AND our flight didn't leave until 630, not 6 so we had plenty of time. Better safe than sorry I guess.



We met some of the coolest people, ate some of the best food, drank some of the best beer, and saw some beautiful cities. I can't tell you how many times we looked at each other and said "this can't be our life right now." I am more thankful every day for this experience. AmsterDAYYUM that weekend was unreal!

Occupy Amsterdam







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