I AM AMSTERDAM.

My friend Rachel and I both had 3 day weekends, so I took my first plane trip to Amsterdam!
Our trip started out great. Luckily, we had a slow night at work, so we got out right at 10 and caught the last train out of Garmisch to Munich. We spent the night in the Munich Airport on some comfy chairs and then boarded our plane bright and early at 7:30. After an easy hour flight, we made our way to our hostel to unload and then headed to the city! We walked through Dam Square and around Jordan (a less touristy area). The canals are gorgeous! I found the flower market, which was an entire block lined with flowers. Sadly we missed the tulips--one of the main tourist attractions in Amsterdam in the spring. We also toured the Anne Frank house, which was a very moving experience to actually be in the place where the family hid for so long. After a long walk in the rain we finally made it to an Indonesian restaurant that someone from our hostel recommended. The long walk was worth it, and Rach and I are now bigs fans of gado-gado. Try it if you have never had it before!


Day 2 we took a 4 hour countryside bike tour and saw Amsterdam from a different perspective.
It was gorgeous and nice to be away from the craziness of the city, and we made a new friend, Maddie! She had just finished studying in Spain and was traveling for a bit with her mom. We also tried a traditional Dutch dessert, pofretages (spelling???)... basically mini puffy pancakes with powdered sugar. Excellent!


Then I headed to the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum. Van Gogh was my favorite since he is one of my favorite painters. The Rijksmuseum has art from the Dutch Golden Age in the 1600s. I also toured a diamond store because many of the world's diamonds pass through Holland. I saw how they are cut, cleaned, and polished. And then they tried to get me to buy some... a bit out of my trip budget! Rach and I grabbed dinner and then went on our candlelight wine and cheese canal cruise. We met some more fun people and also got a tour of the Red Light District. For those of you who do not know, marijuana and prostitution are both legal in Amsterdam. The Red Light District really is glowing with red lights and streets lined with glass doors and prostitutes waiting for customers. The curtains are closed when they have visitors... definitely a bit overwhelming, but a must see if you are in Amsterdam.

Day 3 was very relaxing. I went for a run in the morning and the city is very different in the morning. Not even the cafes are open and the streets are pretty empty compared to the bustling nights. We found a great coffee shop called Grolsch cafe with a perfect view of the canals. We did a little shopping and then headed to Vondelpark to walk around. It was very big and very pretty, and we got very lost! Luckily, you can get on any tram going towards the central station and find your way back to the main part of town! We had a fun little adventure and got to see some very pretty parts of Amsterdam on our journey back to the hostel. We met some nice boys from Florida who were traveling Europe, so we talked to them for a long time and just enjoyed the sunshine! We ended our night with dinner back at our favorite cafe and tucked in early since we had to wake up at 4:30 AM to make it to the airport for our flight home.

After a very frustrating, extremely long line in the airport we finally boarded and made our way back to Munich. We met a large group of guys who were also going to Garmisch for a bike tour. They shared their pretzels and sausages with us on the train home, and we finally arrived in Garmisch!