Amsterdam-lekker lekker

This past weekend a group of 10 of us went to Amsterdam.  

When you hear about Amsterdam from your friends who have been there before they tell you about the "coffee" shops and the bars and clubs to go to.  Where the best weed is, where the cheapest drinks are etc.  But one thing that I never heard a lot about is how absolutely beautiful it is there.  When we got off the metro and went looking for our hotel none of us were complaining about the walk or the fact that we were lost or that our bags were heavy.  We were all looking around, taking everything in.  It was soo pretty there, and I had no idea it was going to be that way.  Everything was also surprisingly clean.  There was also a lot to do there, we didnt even get to everything.  I am so glad that I went.  at first I thought it was going to be a very lazy, smoke-filled weekend and I was not sure about spending the whole weekend doing that instead of traveling more, but I was completely wrong and I am so happy I went.

We went to the Anne Frank House and it was so cool.  A little eerie.  There were pieces of her diary written on the walls throughout the house and pictures of the families, letters and postcards written by them, or for them.  Videos and interviews from the people who helped them hide.  Her actual diary was at the end and then we all signed a guest book thing before leaving.  It was so really cool to actually be there and see what they experienced so many years ago.  

We went from Anne Frank to the Heineken Factory.  That was really cool to go through.  There were so many rooms and things to look at there.  We got to taste the beer after "stage 1" when it was just hops and barley basically.  It was interesting.  There were rooms full of old advertisements and adds for Heineken.  At the end we got 2 free beers (that I didnt drink, gross) and behind the bar there were 3 T.V.s running clips of movies that had Heineken.  I sat and watched that for a while and there are a lot of the same actors, in different movies drinking the same beer (Heineken), and I never realized it before. 

We also went to the zoo which was so so so much fun, and everyone knows how much I love the zoo.  This zoo was so big we didnt even see it all.  It was set up in such a different way than any other zoo I had ever been to.  The exhibits were very open and you could get close to the animals.  You could literally reach your hands into almost every exhibit.  It was a little scary.  It was also a lot dirtier than zoos in America.  There were a lot of "bird of prey" like owls and stuff there and there were so many dead animals at the bottom of their cages.  We saw like 5 dead mice in one, and little bunny head (ripped off, SO GROSS) on the floor of another.  They also dont clean up after the animals very often, the whole zoo smelled bad, but it smelled like rotten food and poop and dirty animals.  But most of the animals were exactly what you would see at Woodland Park only there were so many more.  The Orang was the most fun.  There was a male who was sitting at the back with his back to us the whole time and every once in a while would peek over to see what was going on.  But the female, who looked pretty young, was playing with us the whole time.  Putting on a great show.  They had a big climbing tree and these 2 buckets at the bottom.  This little monkey was climbing the ropes and swinging into the buckets and ended up bringing them into the tree and throwing one away and sitting up in the tree inside the other bucket.  She was so cute.  We all took a lot of pictures of her but no one thought to take a video of the show.

We basically conducted our very own walking tour of Amsterdam.  It is basically a big U and it is really easy to get lost, but at the same time it was easy to find your way back to something your recognize.  We walked MILES  I swear, my body still hurts but it was so worth it because there was so many cool things to look at that you didnt realize how far you walked until you sat down.  All in all it was a really fun trip and I love Amsterdam, and would definitely go back again, there is so much that we didnt do there.  It was the biggest relief when we were flying back into London instead of Arizona.  Even though we had to take the tram to the train to the airplane to the train to the tube to the bus....before we got back to our place. It was an great adventure!!

Peace 

MalMil