Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Definitely An Adult

We made it to Amsterdam last night! What we didn't plan on, was to be there the same weekend as their Pride Parade. Despite coming in around midnight, the parties (or after parties) were still going strong. As we were couch surfing (a wonderful invention for broke college students traveling all over Europe) with a host living a fair way outside of the city, we got a great city tour courtesy the public transit system.

Arriving at our host's bust stop, I couldn't help but notice all the stars you could see. It was a super clear night, and we were far away from any sort of downtown area, so light pollution was almost non existent. The only downside to arriving so late at night, was that we didn't get an opportunity to really get to know our host.

Waking up nice and early we set out for a full day of exploring Amsterdam. Our master plan: walk in a giant circle/ towards anything that looks interesting. The first interesting attraction? Breakfast! (yay, food!) Despite seeing many breakfast cafes on our way towards the main station, in the direction we decided to walk, they were few and far between. Luckily, there were excellent distractions (beautiful canal views, street markets) to keep us from losing our morale too early in the morning.
Could you imagine walking along here to work?
Meandering our way down towards Museum platz (? Something like that) we continued our campaign to be recognized as mature adults. To show our commitment to maturity we only ran through the fountain once. To further our claims to adulthood we responsibly chose chips and froyo for lunch.
We didn't even have to get wet!
Nice large place to sit in the sun and dry off
Indulging in the local food specialties
Unfortunately, perhaps, for my traveling companions we stumbled across an American bookstore. Even the hindrance of having to carry any acquired books for the remainder of the trip could not stop me from enjoying being in a bookstore full of English books.
Wonder who lived there...
My backpack now a bit heavier, we resumed our stroll through the city admiring canals and window shopping for postcards. Eventually though, our stamina for walking through the city was drained and we headed to the docks to get a canal tour in a boat.
Out in the harbor
Bridges with lights (hard to see during the day)
Bridges with bikes (plenty easy to see during the day)
The boat tour titled "100 highlights" only managed to highlight two things to me:
1. Amsterdam is really pretty.
2. I could totally live here.
Besides having canals all over the place, the other thing Amsterdam is littered with (literally) is bikes. As I have never gotten my driver's license (or really plan to), a city where you can get everywhere with a boat (I have my sailing card) and a bike sounds like the perfect place to live.
A bike garage. Nearly completely full too.
Boats need to be low to fit under the tiny bridges
As we left on the right train back to Stuttgart, I noticed something that was hidden by the night on the way there. The Netherlands are really flat. Seeing how completely flat the country could be, it became much more believable that someone could've once believed that the Earth was flat.
There may or may not be cows in the distance
We even saw a windmill! (From the train though)

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