Just-Add-Whine: Europe: Amsterdam, Netherlands (Jan 11

January 11th, 2013:

The sky was beautiful! It's always astounding to me how technology is. We can fly 1000s of miles away in less than 10 hours....

After 9.5 hours and a couple of inflight meals, we finally arrived to the Amsterdam Airport. We were all exhausted, but running off of adrenaline of being in Europe. None of us had been before. The process of showing your passport and answering questions about our stay was rather intimidating to me, but I passed the process and made it through.

We were allowed to spend a couple extra days there as long as it was on our own time and budget. No problem! It was decided we would spend our first weekend in Amsterdam before we had to report to work the following Monday.

Luckily Rion had done his research for all of us before we got there. He knew exactly what to ask the people at the train station ticket counter in order to get us to our hotel destination in Sloterdijck, Amsterdam.

I've never had to travel by train before to get to places, so this was actually a really neat experience to me, and rather convenient. I know a lot of the locals complain about the expenses, but I think it's worth it, and I wouldn't mind bringing this system to the United States to travel from coast to coast.

We finally arrived to the Sloterdijck train station. I'm telling you, I was always impressed with the architecture.

Here is a view of our hotel from the train station: The Holiday Inn. Totally European -- haha. jk

We did our research and found this to be a convenient location, within our budget, and in a safe location. I had plenty of flashes of horror movies where trips to Europe went wrong, and I wasn't about to live it myself.

The view from our hotel room of the train station:

It was FREEZING there. I was so thankful I bought a scarf.

So we bundled up and headed out to the train station to head to Amsterdam.

We saw bicycles everywhere all the time.

Outside Amsterdam Centraal Station:

Amsterdam Centraal Station:

Stopped in a tourist shop and had to take advantage of the extra large dutch clogs:

Saw some Politie (Police):

And we walked around observing the city.

Every canal was so cute to me too, and this city had a lot of them.

Even at night, the canals lit up from the lights from the buildings.

Eventually we found this "I Amsterdam" sign that I had seen in friends' photos before who has visited Amsterdam. Apparently, it's moved around the city. We were lucky enough to catch it here for the weekend.

More buildings at night:

After lots of walking around, it was time to head back to the hotel to get some real sleep.

Night shot of the train station from the room:

January 12th, 2013:

Started the morning with some breakfast and some minor mapping out of what we'd like to do for the day. It would involve more exploring of Amsterdam.

The hotel we stayed at had a cool mural of the train station on the wall.

We decided to do a couple tours this day, starting with a bus tour:

The Netherlands have windmills!

The next tour was a canal tour:

Library:

They often spoke of Dutch people keeping their blinds open because they feel they have "nothing to hide", as well as the way the buildings would slant due to settling. They were described as "dancing buildings". The front of the buildings would also tend to lean more forward on top. It was said they would do this in order to prevent hitting the side of the building with furniture and things if they needed to get items them through the top windows.

The tours were fun, but short. We got back to walking around the city, stopping at a couple more tourist shops. We found this one with a black light section that I would've totally bought a shirt at, but they were so expensive. Roughly 28 euros!

Tried a dessert. Don't remember the name of it, but it's a waffle with whipped cream and walnuts. Pretty good.

Found a butcher. It was surprisingly very busy!

More beautiful canals:

Couple of cats trying to stay warm in the store window:

Go Gators ;) (Gator backpack)

More walking. Still sort of decorated for Christmas.

There were cool arsty lights handing up at night.

As we were standing here, a guy started loudly speaking to Wesley asking him to move out of the way, that he was standing on the bathroom. We were kind of clueless at what he was trying to say because it literally looked like a manhole cover. Sure enough, the "manhole cover" started raising out of the ground. It was a urinal!

It was the most bizarre thing! I guess they only have it up at night so when men leave from the bars, they don't pee wherever the want, including the canal?

Across the street, we checked out an "Ice Bar". I had heard of these before, even in Florida, but we figured 'why not'.

I don't recommend any of my American friends to travel Amsterdam and do this. To me, it was a big tourist trap. It was FREEZING outside.. and even MORE freezing when we got into the "Ice Bar". Basically, it's a show about penguins, and you're given two Heinekens to drink in a mug made of ice. I don't think we stayed the whole time in the room because it was that cold. They had some ice sculptures, but I have been to Gaylord Palm's ICE! Exhibit in Kissimmee, Florida (which is BA), so it didn't impress me that much. (PS - They told us no photos inside the Ice Bar, but somehow someone got these)

We started heading back to the hotel after that. We went back to the "I AMSTERDAM" sign, which surprisingly wasn't too crowded, so I grabbed a couple more photos while I could.

"t" for Tumbleston!

We hit up the Dutch McDonald's before calling it a night. I bought a happy meal which ended up being like 6 euros! Super expensive.

January 13th, 2013:

We had some time to kill before we had to catch the train to Eindhoven, our hotel where we'd stay close to work, so we continued to explore Amsterdam a little more.

The Netherlands are known for their tulips. Unfortunately for us since we arrived in the Winter, we didn't get to see many tulips, at least not in tulip fields. There was, however, tulip green houses along one of the canals. I thought it was pretty neat.

Got to see a woman moving out of her 3rd floor apartment. She had to use a pulley to get her furniture out of the window to the men on the ground. I've never seen anything like this.