Amsterdam... I-I follow, I follow you...

I've been a little slack about creating a post for the rest of Erin's visit... my bad. It is vacation time though so I've been lazy. My apologies. So on February 28th, we left Paris and took a 3 hour and 19 min train to Amsterdam. We had a bit of trouble finding the hotel but things all worked out. Once we dropped our stuff off in the room, we went out to explore. Amsterdam had a much different atmosphere than Paris. It definitely has a more party vibe to it... I wonder why... haha. Because the tourist shops were the only things open, we went in and out of similar looking shops while window shopping at others. We decided we would leave real shopping for the next day (not that we had much choice). The next morning we got up around 9am and went down to have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Note to anyone who has the choice to buy 12 euro 50 tickets for a restaurant breakfast instead of eating out... don't! It was definitely a bad choice on our part. We were thinking it would save time, which it did, but it was also crap. Definitely a disappointment. Oh well, you live and you learn haha. After breakfast we went on a canal tour. It was only a half hour long but it was nice because it gave you a unique view of the canals and little tidbits of information in Dutch, French, and English. We had some time to kill after the canal tour so we decided to do some more shopping. Next it was time to make our way to the Anne Frank House. On the way there we found this cute shop that had original artwork by a guy named Mark Raven. There were paintings, sketches, and shirts with his prints on them. I ended up buying a blue shirt with one of his Amsterdam bike sketches on it. Much better than a typical tourist shirt! Once we got to the Anne Frank house we saw the long line that wrapped around the building. Erin was smart enough to buy our tickets online beforehand so we didn't have to wait! The house was turned into an unfurnished museum with pages of Anne's diary, quotes, decorations, videos, and artifacts in different rooms. There was even a part of the wallpaper that had the heights of Anne and Margot Frank recorded on it. It was interesting to be able to see such a famous part of history. I can't imagine what it was like to live in those circumstances. It definitely made me want to read her diary again. Once we were finished there, we left to go rent bicycles. One thing about Amsterdam - EVERYONE rides a bike. I couldn't believe the amount of bicycles, it was insane. We of course had to experience what it was like to bike in Amsterdam so we paid the 10 euros for a day (cheap!) and made our way towards the I Amsterdam sign. On the way, my bike chain fell off which frustrated me beyond belief because I ended up with grease all over my hands. Good thing I had gloves to put on! I did, however, have to pay 0,50 just to wash my hands though. Oh Europe! There were a lot of people at the I Amsterdam sign so we took our pictures, grabbed some food, and then left to bike around the canals some more. After we returned the bikes, we shopped some more, ate some dutch pancakes (Erin had strawberry and I had blueberry... yum!), walked around, shopped again, and then watched Forrest Gump on the TV in our hotel room. Let me tell you about the hotel room. #1 - it was much cheaper than the one in Paris and much nicer, and #2 - the beds were ridiculously comfortable! I definitely would have liked to stayed there for a couple more nights. In the morning, we suffered through another not-so-yummy breakfast and then bought our tickets back to Lille. We were wondering why our tickets were so much cheaper than we expected then we discovered we weren't taking the high-speed train and we had to switch twice. During one of the switches, I lost my French phone. Bummer. Gonna have to get a new one now. Good thing you're not stuck in contracts like you are in Canada. We ended up traveling for 5 hours or so but it was worth it to save the moola. It was probably a 60-70 euro difference! That, and Erin got to eat a Belgian waffle in Antwerp! I'd say that's a win.

Bedankt voor het lezen! Thanks for reading!