These past 2 weeks have been full of excitement. Two of my best friends from Rollins, Rosie and Sam, came to visit me for their Spring Break vacation, since mine doesn’t start until the end of next week. I was only expecting Sam to come visit, as that’s what we had planned, but when I went to the airport to pick her up, I was surprised by seeing that Rosie secretly planned to visit as well! We spent the first couple of days here in Ireland, where I took them to see a lot of fun things around Maynooth and Dublin. We went to the oldest pub in Ireland, namely ‘Old Brazen Head’, which was established in 1198 (wow!). We also toured the Jameson Distillery, and did a bunch of the cool touristy activities around the city that I hadn’t really gotten a chance to do. Then we ventured over to Amsterdam for the rest of the week.
We were all so excited to be going to Amsterdam for the first time, we got all of our bags ready and set forth towards the airport. The entire process of checking in and going through security took literally 10 minutes so we had a very long time to wait so naturally we found nesting ground in the airport bar. We enjoyed ourselves a couple drinks and then it was time to board. We flew RyanAir, which is a really cheap airline that goes to many destinations in around Europe. It was interesting to fly with them because when you board the plane you walk outside and go up a staircase to get into the plane like the used to do back in the day, which was pretty cool. We landed at the Schiphol Airport at around 10:30pm and got to our hotel. We were all so hungry from being at the airport for so long that we decided to see if there was anything open around the area. As we walked down the streets, club promoters were inviting us to free entrance and free shots. We knew this was no offer to pass so we went in to a bunch of little clubs and bars, getting free shots of this delicious drink that’s called Sourz. We hadn’t planned to go out that night since we had literally just gotten off of a plane but the night had potential so we went back to change and grab some more money and then we hit up more bars.
The next two days we went out and toured the city. We walked around the streets, went souvenir shopping, cheese tasting, the whole nine yards. We also went to some of the great museums there such as the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum. It was absolutely astonishing walking through the Anne Frank House seeing the conditions her and her family had to live in and just being in that space alone was so powerful and emotional to experience. The Van Gogh museum was also an amazing place to visit. We got to be up close and personal with a lot of his great works and also some of the lesser known ones that were also just as beautiful. Of course the other places on the list were the infamous Red Light Streets and also an Ice Bar where the temperature is -10 degrees Celcius.
On our last day we took an hour-long canal tour through the city and got to see all these beautiful sights from the boat. It definitely made me see the city in a different way. Afterwards we had time to kill while we waiting for our flight so we continued to venture through the city and found a farmers market by one of the churches. Unfortunately we did not get to sample the best apple pie in the city because the line was incredibly long but we went to a pub around the corner whose pie was pretty darn good. Aside from having my phone stolen and being treated very rudely at one low-end Italian restaurant, I had a marvelous time in Amsterdam and I really hope to have a chance to visit it again.