I woke up nice and early (4:45) to meet my 5:00 am taxi outside the Villa. I confirmed that we were going to the airport and sat for the surprisingly short 15 minute ride. Once I arrived, having already printed my boarding pass I proceeded to security where I was the second person it line. Two minutes after I arrived it opened and I was officially more than an hour early for my flight. So I sat in the airport and did homework/read until boarding time (note: homework done before 6am Friday, impressive). When I did board, I found for the second time (the first being my flight from London to Florence) that I had way more space than on normal American flights. The seats were also much nicer. The flight to Amsterdam was only 2 hours or so. I just read since I wasn’t tired.
When I arrived I took my carry-on luggage and proceeded to the train station located underneath Schiphol Airport where I purchased a ticket to Amsterdam Centraal. The train arrived shortly and I rode to the city center. When I got off my instructions were to find the hotel and then make my way to Anne Frank’s house to tour before Aunt Jill and Uncle Tim arrived. I followed my instructions, exited the station, and turned left to go to the hotel. The first thing that happened after I started to cross the street was a near collision with a cyclist. This was my introduction to biking in Amsterdam. Biking is HUGE there. Sooo big. I believe I’ve read that there are more bikes than people in the city and definitely more than cars. So to accommodate the massive amount of cyclists they have bike lanes that are very big and frequently separated from the road by a median. After having discovered the bike lanes it wasn’t an issue, but the very first time I crossed the street it was a surprise. Things didn’t really look right so I decided to circle around the station to see if there was a front side. There was. It was very obvious.
Also the front of the station had thousands of bikes. Literally. From there I proceeded to our actual hotel, which was just a bridge or two over from the station. Speaking of bridges, it is important to note that Amsterdam is full of canals. It’s like Venice except there are also roads and the canals are in a specific pattern instead of being crazy and random. So I shortly arrived at the Mint Hotel where we’d be staying and put my bags behind the counter until check in later. Then I asked the concierge person to tell me how to get to Anne Frank House. He gave me a map and filled me in on both the walking and public transport routes. Another note: Dutch people all speak perfect English. Fact. They do. I literally know no Dutch except for straat (street), which I just picked up from street signs. I also looked up “Do you speak English?” (Spreek ye Engles?), but never used it. I don’t even know thank you or hello.
I decided to take the trams to get there a bit faster so I headed back towards the station and boarded the number 13 tram that ran close to the House. I bought a ticket that lasted an hour so that I only had to buy one. When I arrived I found the house immediately with no trouble and was inside within a couple of minutes. I got a little brochure that explained everything and headed into the house. It was a very cool historical experience I thought. Though the house is basically set up like a museum now explaining the history and story of the family, it seems much more intimate and unique because you are actually in the house where it occurred. Everything that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary was present and you could see many of the things she talked about. The Nazis had removed most of the furniture, but there were still artifacts like books, papers, and games. There were also cool things like pictures Anne had taped to the walls of her room in the Annex to make it more lively and pencil markings of the girls’ growth on the wall. The house itself is a typical canal house in Amsterdam so it is very narrow, but deep. The stairs between floors are very steep and almost ladder-like. Although it didn’t last more than 40 minutes or so it was a very nice somber historical experience.
When I exited the house there was an enormous line winding around the block so I was very fortunate to have arrived early. I headed back to the hotel and took my bags up to the room where Aunt Jill soon came to get me. We headed up to the roof where Uncle Tim was meeting with a member of the hotel staff to discuss the hotel’s green-ness essentially. Did I mention our rooms were free? Aunt Jill being the awesome travel writer she is arranged to right about the hotel in exchange for a night of accommodations. Sweet! The rood top was beautiful we had a really nice view of the city, which looked pretty different from other cities I’ve seen. Apparently Amsterdam was spared most of the damage of the world wars and as a result maintains many of its 17th century characteristics. We had drinks there on the roof and eventually headed back to the room to prepare for the day.
We got our stuff together and headed to the ground floor where we went ahead and ate lunch since we were hungry. I had fish and chips and it was a delightful relief from the delicious yet repetitive Italian food I had been living off of for several weeks. Then we headed into the city to rent bikes. Once we had our yellow bikes we headed of to the Jordaan area on the east side of the city to ride around and get to know the city. The weather was really nice, bordering on too warm, but as long as we were moving it was pleasant. I got a really nice tour of Amsterdam as we rode among the tree-lined canals and stopped at cafés for drinks.
Canal houses are one of the most distinctive features of the city. They are all tall and narrow and usually brown with white trim. They have distinct gables with different shapes at the top that give them their unique silhouettes. While we were there we learned about pyramid, step, neck, and bell gables. They also have these little pulleys jutting out from their attics that are used to hoist up furniture that wouldn’t fit up the stairs.
After a couple of hours of exploring and relaxing we headed for an obligatory 5 minute walk through the red light district then after going back to the hotel to freshen up, we cycled to an Indonesian restaurant where we ordered platters of mixed vegetables and spices and ate up. After dinner we planned to go to the Van Gough Museum and we cycled over there, but upon arriving we decided that the prices were too steep and decided to explore instead. We eventually found a little pocket of local bars/restaurants that looked cool and walked around a bit before going to get some ice cream. After that we went to this bar called Door 74 that was a secret door like a speakeasy. When sat down at the bar we ordered me my first real cocktail, which I did not like. I think it was called Goosebumps or something strange and it tasted like plants and alcohol and I couldn’t handle it. So Aunt Jill and Uncle Tim drank it for me, and I ate a heck-ton of olives instead. Afterwards we headed back home and crashed for the night.
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