A few weeks ago my roommate told me she was going to overnight bus it to Amsterdam, a ride that takes eighteen hours. I laughed and told her that was the most horrible sounding travel situation ever. At the time I thought I was going to train or fly there. When I found out that a one-way train ticket was the same price as the round trip bus ticket I started to reevaluate the situation. I mean, how horrible could an eighteen-hour bus ride really be?
The answer is: HORRIBLE! You know how there is always that crazy person on the bus or metro system that no one wants to acknowledge? Well, turns out when all the crazy personalities on the metro aren’t there, they’re overnighting it to Amsterdam. That means you are stuck with them in a moist, stuffy bus, stuck sleeping next to them for eighteen hours. There is no escape from them. For some reason the bus ride we took was not full of broke college students looking for a cheap way to travel as we thought it would, but instead it was full of gypsies looking to travel in a party bus. Let’s just say they started the Amsterdam party a little early and wanted us to join them. Luckily, they didn’t know any English and were too busy making beer runs at every stop, including a trip for three beers each at six in the morning, to continue bothering us. I think our favorite part of this whole weekend was when they finally got off the bus and we were free of them.
Besides being trapped on a bus with quite unfortunate neighbors, the bus ride went smoothly and a long eighteen hours later we found ourselves descending down the bus steps into the land of vice, where everything the United States deemed “illegal,” Amsterdam has legalized. Amsterdam is famous for its “coffee shops”, which are really just places you can sit and smoke or buy weed and other drugs like shrooms. It was culture shock at its finest. Amsterdam is a city of contradictions. It has the gorgeous, quiet, classy canal streets that Venice is so well known for and a sin city that puts America’s to shame. Amsterdam is Vegas on steroids. Because where Vegas is all lights, flash and fake, you take one wrong turn in Amsterdam and you’re in the red light district. The red light district is actually on the list of places you should visit in Amsterdam and is bold, real, and in-your-face. It was surprising to me because I had a lot of people tell me I should visit it when I told them I was going to Amsterdam. So I went into it thinking it was going to be more Vegas style and less sad. The red light district is made up of rows of streets that are full of glass doors that show rooms where the women are posing in next to nothing. It was an extremely odd experience because there are rows and rows of them and if the drapes were drawn you knew that they were busy with a customer. The most shocking part was to see people actually entering or leaving the rooms. It’s just a common practice in Amsterdam. We actually met some Dutch people and asked them about it and they told us everyone does it and everyone who comes to Amsterdam comes to smoke weed and sleep with a prostitute.
Needless to say that was one of the most shocking parts of the weekend and was not a favorite of mine. In the classy part of Amsterdam, there are some really nice museums that it has. Our first day, we went into the city and visited the Vincent Van Gogh Museum, stopping first to visit the “I Am-sterdam” sign to take some photos.
From there we went and wandered around the city, stopping first to (of course) try the pastries. Their specialty seems to be fried dough balls, kind of like beignets, covered in either chocolate or powdered sugar.
The next day we went to the Bloemenmarkt, the floating flower market where they sell all the tulip bulbs they’re famous for.
On the outside of the market on land there are numerous cheese shops with an abundance of free samples! The best! So as we looked at all the bulbs, and Grow-Your-Own-Weed kits, we snacked on cheese. We all ended up buying our own little cheese wheels. During our day we made sure to take a little detour and check out a Dutch windmill before continuing on to another well-known Saturday market. We then attempted to join a free walking tour (which a lot of places offer and I would recommend checking out) but unfortunately ended up missing it. It ended up working out just fine because we were in the city center where there was a huge row of stalls. We walked along it, ate some more desserts like the famous Dutch stroopwafels and then made a wrong turn and once again ended up in the red light district.
We ended the day by going to the Anne Frank Museum, which was probably one of my favorite parts of the weekend. I’m pretty sure the majority of us had to read the Diary of Anne Frank in middle school. Having read the book made the whole experience that much more moving. We got to see the secret attic, the actual bookcase that hid the entrance, and Anne’s room with some of the decorations she had put up on her wall. We also got to see her actual diary where she wrote her thoughts and then loose-leaf papers that she had also written on. From there it was time again to eat and we went to a Dutch pancake house, which is basically the same as crepes. That night we decided to stupidly, go to an ice bar. It probably would have been a great decision to do in the summer time, but when it’s already freezing outside it wasn’t the best. It was really interesting though. They gave us these giant gloves and a large cape/coat thing that completely covered us. Then when we went inside they gave us drinks in ice glasses. The decorations around the room were all frozen in ice blocks and the seating was only giant ice benches or seats. It was definitely an interesting experience, but way too cold for wintertime.
Since Amsterdam is also on water like Venice, but less extreme, it was hard to navigate at times. We’d be walking along and know we had to get somewhere only to be stopped by a canal. We embraced the waterways though and ended up staying in a “bostel” for the weekend. Our boat hostel was very nice if not a lot on the small side. Either way the 18-hour bus rides there and back and our cramped boat quarters were all completely worth it because we ended up having a great weekend in the land of vice.