FOLLOW ME TO AMSTERDAM

I made a Youtube video compilation about my time in Amsterdam. If you look back at my history, you can see the blog posts I did back in December 2013. I thought you would like to see Amsterdam through my eyes. Subscribe to my YT channel: ima007ninja.

Europe: An Overview of St. Andrews, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid & Barcelona

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries." - Aldous Huxley

After traveling around Europe I think it is fair to assume that you can indicate how tourist-y a city is by a few things: the number of businesses on wheels, homeless people, international groups tours led by a person holding a flag, tourist shops on a given street, people who approach you and the overall vibe of the streets. These are my own personal opinions. Obviously every traveling experience is unique to each person.

With this criterion I would rank all the cities I visited in this order, from most touristy to least touristy:

Rome

Barcelona
Madrid

Amsterdam

St. Andrews

St. Andrews obviously has an asterisk because it was where I lived for a whole semester. But I figured since I lived there for four months that I would give my input on this town.  It's the birthplace of golf so it does that have that element of tourism.  It had a very homely feel. Everyone is nice. It is a small tightknit community.  There is the Old Course but other than that, very minimal tourism.

Amsterdam

A lively city both day and night. Amsterdam is one of the more chill and laidback cities you will come across.  I don’t even think I saw a homeless person in Amsterdam, at least not in the city center.  The pungent smell of weed was a turn off to me personally but there are definitely other PG-rated places to see.  The trams are an easy and efficient way to minimize the amount of walking you had to do.  I live in a city with no public transportation and even I was able to figure out the trams after a day of riding them. There are an abundance of museums to go visit by some of the greatest artists.  I read that it has one of the highest concentrations of museums per unit area. I would recommend going in December when the Amsterdam Light Festival is going on.  What is so great about Amsterdam is that it is a place I could actually imagine people living in. The tour guide told me that it is the 3^rd best non-native English speakers who speak English. Translation: they speak English amazingly well. Tourism levels are moderately high but not overwhelming at all. It’s a place where you can just lay low and go where you want to go. Overall, I loved this city and I would love to come back.

Rate: 8.5/10

Rome

I have very mixed feelings about Rome. It is a city with a rich history that has been tainted by excessive tourism.  I know it is just business and people need to make a living, but by the end of my first day, I simply ran out of patience for anyone who tried to stop and sell me things.  It’s not the easiest or cleanest city to navigate, ironic because they were the ones who built roads in the first place and the traffic is a nightmare.  Honestly, besides Vatican City, there wasn’t much to do in Rome. It was mostly you would walk to a site, look at it, take a photo and move on. Walking to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica and going to the Vatican Museum were the highlights of my time in Rome. The gelato and pizza were overhyped. That’s not to say that they were bad, it’s just that I could find something that resembled it back at home and for half the price.

Rate 5/10

Barcelona

Everyone sees the city in a different way depending on how they go about travelling through the city.  I don’t know if I could give as accurate an impression of Barcelona as I have done with Amsterdam and Rome seeing as how we took a safer approach.  Barcelona is notorious for pickpockets, so be wary of purses and pockets.  I never came across a pickpocket but you never know what could happen in Barcelona.  I never went out to walk the streets at night but from what I could see, it is a pretty walkable city, some places will require a taxi but most places are easily accessible.  Don’t expect them to be well versed in the English language. You should know some basic Spanish/Catalan phrases or take a guidebook.  There are many interesting exhibits to see.  I will say that a lot of our money went into admission fees to different exhibits so if you are short on cash or want to save money, I would recommend visiting La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo.  We came in December but I’m sure the beaches get very busy when it warms up.  It’s a great shopping city as well, everything from quirky street markets to high-fashion boutiques. I didn’t do enough research to consider getting the Barcelona Tourist Pass but if it benefits, I would say take it.

Rate: 7/10

Madrid
We sandwiched Barcelona between two trips to Madrid so we got to experience it twice, and in two very different ways. The first time around we visited Retiro Park which is a very nice place to relax.  In the afternoon all the street vendors and miscellaneous street performers started to pop up.  There are a lot of tourist hotspots like Palacio Real but also a lot of high traffic areas like Puerta Del Sol. That was a major one.  The streets were full of people.  Between Barcelona and Madrid, I would say that I personally liked Barcelona more. There were more entertaining things to do there but Madrid is also a very vibrant city full of history that you shouldn't miss.
Rate: 6.5/10

December 28, 2013: There's No Place Like Home

"Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting place was." -Jodi Picoult

          Getting to go abroad for the semester was one the greatest and scariest things I have ever done.  I loved that I got to go study in the UK at such a internationally flavoured university. You could walk up the stairwells of the library and hear phone conversations in 3 different languages. As interesting as it was to study abroad, the experience of being on my own for the first time, magnified by living in a different country has given me a greater appreciation for the stability and familiarity of home. For the first 18 years of your life, you take for granted the house you live in, the parents who feed and love you, the friends you've known for years and the routine you've crafted for yourself.  When you leave for the first time, it feels as if the world is suddenly upside down.  The things in your life that have been constants for your entire life are suddenly not there. 
   
          The reality starts to settle in when you have your first fever and suddenly you have to set reminders on your phone to self-medicate with Advil because your mother isn't there. You don't realize how much she means to you until you are thousands of miles away because before you were a college student, she was always there for you. And now, she is replaced by words from an email and pixels from a webcam.

          After staying in Boston for a night, I was ready to head home.  After a total of about 4 hours and one final boarding pass printout, one final security checkpoint and one final plane boarding, I was off to DFW.  I saw my mom and my brother greeting me at the airport. I hadn't seen their faces in nearly four months! It was so glad to be back home and get reoriented with my home. Was my bathroom sink always that low? Were the lights always that bright? Anyways, that was the conclusion of my semester abroad and subsequent two weeks around Europe. There were highs and lows to this trip but everything is a learning experience and I definitely became a wiser person after this.  To end it with a cliche: there's no place like home.

P.S. If you have read my entire travel diary, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to listen to my story. Whether you know me personally or not, whether you clicked on a link that I advertised for found this my mistake, thank you. I know these are not uploaded in real time and these last posts are six weeks overdue but I really do appreciate everyone reading. I don't care if there's two or two hundred of you all. As long as there is an audience, there is a blogger.

December 17, 2013: Goodbye Amsterdam

"The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." -Samuel Johnson

Before I start to blog about my day, I feel that it is important to say that one of the main reasons I chose to visit Amsterdam was after watching Seth and Josh Meyers's episode of The Getaway about Amsterdam.  The Getaway is a travel themed show on Esquire network. I had recently become a fan of Seth Meyers's work so I immediately knew I wanted to see Amsterdam.  My only regret is not stopping at a souvenir shop and buying gifts to bring back home. Nevertheless, today was a busy day. I packed my schedule with as many things as I could do before my evening departure. I began my day with a free canal cruise that was included when I purchased my Iamsterdam Card. The cruise took us all around the canals and the harbor. It was not the most exciting hour of my life, but any hour that I can spend sitting and looking around the canals of Amsterdam is a good hour. Would I have gone on it if it weren’t free? Probably not.  

After getting off the cruise, I headed to the 9 Straatjes, or the 9 streets, which is technically 3 streets separated by canals. It is a nice shopping district not tarnished by copious quantities of souvenir shops. I stopped by Mensocks, which was a store that I had seen in The Getaway and purchased 2 pairs of socks that were on sale for 5 euros each.  The sizes were most likely too big for me but I wanted to get something there. I know that I should’ve gotten a pair for my brother. But I just really wanted some for myself. Hope he likes pink.

After a little shopping, I wanted to treat myself to some pannenkoekhen at the Upstairs Pancake House, another restaurant featured on The Getaway.  It is supposedly the smallest restaurant in Europe with only 4 tables. I made the trek over only to find that it was closed and would reopen in a few weeks. After enduring a little disappointment, I went on to my next stop, the Anne Frank House.  A very powerful museum confined in such a small space, it’s a great museum that only takes 30-45 minutes to walk through the entire exhibit.

When my stomach could no longer endure the lack of nutrients, I stopped by the Pancake Bakery for lunch.  Pannenkoekhen is a Dutch pancake, a cross between a pancake and a crepe.   They come in both sweet and savory toppings.  I opted for a chicken and cheese pannenkoekhen.  But be warned, they are very filling.  Keep in mind that it was around 2:30pm and all I had eaten that day was an egg and two pieces of toast 6 hours prior.  I was full after eating half my plate.  I forced myself to keep going but had to stop with about ¼ of the pancake left. I also had a hot chocolate that came with a little treat which I now know is called a strop waffle. I remember first having one in Chinese class when my teacher had come back from Amsterdam and brought back these delicious snacks for us.  I regret not buying some to bring back.  Hopefully I can find some back home.

After lunch I stopped by one last museum, the Rembrandt House Museum, also a small museum located in a house.  It doesn’t take too long to comb through; I was in and out in about 30 minutes. I was headed back to my hostel but before I did, I stopped by Rembrandtplein to take a quick photo of Rembrandt’s statue. 

The end of my time here in Amsterdam soon came to a close.  There I was, suitcase in hand, walking to Centraal Station.  They have direct trains to Schiphol Airport, which is very convenient.  The silver lining with traveling is that even though there is a lot of a stress and time constraint, you will find people with the kindest hearts.  After struggling to carry my luggage up the stairs to the platform, a man came by and offered to carry it up the rest of the way.  I had recognized him earlier speaking Vietnamese at the ticket counter and said thank you to him in his native language. He was pleasantly surprised and when I told him which platform we all needed to go (he didn’t know which platform the train departed from), he took my luggage there and carried it onto the train.  When we boarded, he left to join his family and that was the last I saw of him.  It’s good to know that there are still nice people in the world.

The airport process went as usual and my flight to Rome took off.  I arrived in Rome very late and after leaving baggage claim was immediately approached by taxi drivers offering their “generous” transport service to Termini Station for 30 euros. Just another tourist trap. He tried talking me into taking a taxi, but I was not having any of it.  I eventually found a shuttle bus that took me there for 15 euros. Take that Italians. But there was no way that I was going to walk from the station to my hostel at 11 at night. I reluctantly took a taxi that charged me 10 euros to drive to my hostel that could have been a 5-minute walk.  Then my taxi driver started examining my 10-euro note as if I had access to counterfeit euros and I was trying to trick him. Really? You’re the taxi driver and you’re questioning my credibility? Then I went on my way and lugged by suitcase up a flight of stairs once again to check in. By now it was approaching midnight.  I went to bed to get ready for my first full day in Rome.

December 16, 2013: Day Two in Amsterdam

"Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was." -Jodi Picoult

With my only full day in Amsterdam, I was determined to see as much of the city as I possibly could.  I started my day off with a breakfast provided by the hostel of two pieces of toast and a boiled egg.  But I’m not complaining.  At least they had breakfast. My first stop was De Niewke Kerk, the New Church, which was having an exhibit on the Chinese Ming Dynasty.  The exhibit was very enlightening and was full of many ancient Chinese artifacts.  I bought a gift at the gift shop to bring back for my Chinese teacher.  By this point, I had gotten the hang of navigating through the city by tram and I journeyed on to the Museumplein.  I took a photo of the famous Iamsterdam sign and went on to the Van Gogh Museum. 

The only problem with packing your schedule is that it leaves very little time to savour the museum. I had only spent about 45 minutes at the Van Gogh museum. I did this in order to make it in time for a free walking tour of Amsterdam by Sandeman’s New Europe Tour Company. They hold walking tours at most of the major cities in Europe.  Their tours are free but they operate on a tip-based service.  My tour was led by the wonderful Kendra who kept our entire group of 30 entertained for the whole 3 hours.  I tipped her a whole 5 euros for her amazing service.  I learned so much about the city that I never would have known (like why the De Oude Kerk aka the Old Church is in the center of the Red Light District) had I not gone on this tour.

As the day turned to night, I took the opportunity to wander around the Illuminade Walking Tour, held in conjunction with the Amsterdam Light Festival.  There were a few gorgeous pieces however at times it was hard to navigate.  My advice is to take the Watercolors Canal Cruise if you want to see most of the beautiful light pieces. However the compilation of lamps called “We Light Amsterdam” on the Walking Tour is a can’t-miss.  The end of the walking tour signaled the end of my day in Amsterdam.  And it was a great one.