Amsterdam!

As of Saturday evening, I have officially been back from Amsterdam. I went with my mom, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Luckily I wasn't very jet lagged. Although the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam was long, I wasn't too bored, thanks to in-seat personal TV's with at least 20 movies, music, games and TV programs made 8 hours go by quickly! Despite getting sick from something I ate on the way to Amsterdam, the food on the way to Chicago was surprisingly good for airline food.

We stayed at the Grand Armath, a nice hotel right on the canal and close to major attractions. Oh yeah, I shouldn't forget to mention the incredibly good-looking guys at the front desk. :D We arrived Friday morning (7/24) and walked around. Later that afternoon, my friend Megan came and spent the entire weekend with us. It was so nice spending time with her, even if I had a mild stomach bug the first two days (most likely from the awful vegetarian meal I had on the plane--it was so bad that we canceled them for our return flight). Besides having Megan stay at the hotel with us, I took the train to Utrecht to see her and her sister. The three of us got coffee and walked around a pretty park.

I visited 5 museums during the week I was there. Megan and I went to FOAM and the Hermitage together. FOAM is the photography museum and they had exhibits on black and white photos, various African countries, a fashion slide show, and a photographer who took multiple photos of a tree but focused on different angles/space. The Hermitage was my favorite museum as they had a fabulous collection of clothes, artifacts, and paintings from the Russian Czarist era. Not only was it awesome to see the pretty dresses and cool artifacts, but this exhibit instantly brought me back to AP lit, where I read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Megan and I also met up with my mom at the Rikjsmuseum (Royal Museum), where they had a collection of Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings, as well as various Asian artifacts and dollhouses dating back to the 1600's. My mom and I went to Anne Frank's house and the Van Gogh Museum. Anne Frank's house was just what I expected, very moving and intense. The Van Gogh Museum was awesome as well, having seen many pictures of his paintings, and finally being able to see them up close in person. My favorites are the sunflowers, almond blossoms, and his Japanese paintings (I love Asian art).

On a hot day, my mom and I decided to take a canal tour. As we were tired of walking around museums and town, we thought that the tour would be a nice change of pace. The canal was very cool. We had a nice view of various landmarks and old buildings from the boat, not to mention the cute (but gay) couple from Belgium.

Besides the canal tour and museums, we also went shopping and took a day trip to Haarlem. We went to the clothing flea market in Haarlem, which was disappointing, as most of the stuff was pretty touristy. Also, many of the major attractions were closed on Monday, but we did go to the church, which has the world's largest pipe organ and dead people under the floor.

We did a lot of shopping, and I bought some postcards for my collection from the FOAM and Van Gogh museums, a shirt from the flea market in Haarlem, and 2 pairs of shoes (plaid Mary Janes and rainboots with lips).

Unlike France, Amsterdam is not well-known for its food. That said, some meals were a lot better than others. We didn't pick the greatest restaurants at first, but then the meals got better. My favorite meals were those at Thai, Portugese, and Indonesian restaurants. We also stopped at a patissere for coffeees and shared a delicious lemon tart and chocolate mousse.

Well, this is the answer to "how was your trip to Amsterdam?" As you can expect, I took many pictures. That said, I can't fit them all here so I'm going to do several blogs with pictures from my trip to give you a closer look at Amsterdam. I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip (: