Luckily my three friends fell asleep on the bus to Dublin and on the plane to Eindhoven, unfortunately I did not. I usually cannot fall asleep on buses trains or planes so I was exhausted once we got to The Netherlands. I also lost another hour because The Netherlands are one hour ahead of Ireland. Once we got off the plane we noticed signs in Dutch then in English, which was great because none of us speak Dutch. We took a cab to the train station and bought our tickets to Amsterdam! It is great because Ryan air is cheap but they never fly into big cities so you get stuck paying for transportation to the city, although it was not too bad. Once we got to the train station all of the machines were in Dutch, luckily there was a nice man who spoke English that helped us. The train ride to Amsterdam from Eindhoven was an hour and twenty minutes, and the ride was absolutely gorgeous! I did not even want to sleep I was too busy looking out the window.
Once we got to Amsterdam Central we got off the train and got a map. The four of us wrote down the directions to our hotel from the train station but we still had a little trouble. First person we asked did not speak English second person we asked used her GPS to help us which worked out so well! The hotel was only a 5 minute walk from the central which was very convenient. Our "hotel room" ended up being our own apartment with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathroom a living room and a kitchen. We dropped our stuff off and all went to sleep for a few hours because we were so exhausted. When we woke up we went out to the city and got lunch. We looked at the menus confused and before we could ask the waitress came over with the English menus. Lunch turned out great & they even had the best coffee which we needed from all of the traveling and no sleep!
After we decided to go to The Anne Frank House. This was one of the most popular places to go in Amsterdam, I knew it was going to be very interesting. When we got there it started raining and I could not believe the line to get in! Wrapped around the corner and everyone was patiently waiting in the pouring rain. It was only 8 euros to get into the house which I thought was a great deal.
Right after entering the house I saw several times on the wall "A museum with a story". I learned about Anne Frank's history years ago, but I still learned more from visiting all of these exhibits in the house. It was very interesting to be where Anne Frank was hiding in history. The part of the house that stuck out to me the most was the windows with the black curtains on them. We learned that she was never allowed to open the curtains not even a little bit which made her room very dark and dreary. There was even a bookcase left in the house which made me realize how authentic everything was, also the fact that we were not allowed to take pictures in the house made it clear how ancient everything was. This was such a great experience, although it was very sad I learned so much and got to see all of the exhibits up close and in person.
We also went on a canal tour which was beautiful! It was at night so all the canals were lit up & they served cheese and crackers, and wine on the boat.
Overall I absolutely loved Amsterdam! Experiencing a different part of Europe was so much fun & very interesting. Taking the trains in The Netherlands was an experience, hearing the beautiful language, learning more about their culture and seeing such beautiful scenery was all amazing!!! I definitely plan on going back one day :)
Rome this month!!! Very excited.. I also still have so much more to blog about - I will keep updating as much as I can - classes are ending in a few weeks and finals start pretty early, but I will keep adding :)
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