Amsterdam Day 2

We woke up around 9am and had a breakfast in bed. We had crackers, smoked cheese, and meat. It was quite yummy and Dutch cheese is the best! We got around and headed to meet with Hunter's family to go to the Rijksmuseum, a very popular art museum. They were having a special Rembrandt exhibit!

On our way to meet, we stopped at a supermarket called Dirk's and bought some cookies and also got some cash. The ATMs are really expensive here when using a Canadian card, but the market was able to give me €50 and only charged 15 cents rather than €5+. So if you're ever in Amsterdam and your bank doesn't have any partner ATMs, check out Dirk's as they were helpful! PS they also have cheap Ben and Jerrys ice cream!

We eventually made it to the apartment hotel Hunters family was staying at and hung out until they were ready to go. They are also on the 4th floor with no elevator and have many many steep stairs to climb, I think possibly more than are at our AirBnB. The apartment is really nice though!

We took a tram to the museum and met Bailey at the entrance. We bought our tickets online through Klook. Klook is an awesome app that gives great deals for attractions and much more all over the world. We've used it in Singapore and Australia and absolutely love it. Often you get better deals than buying them on site or if you bundle attractions. I highly recommend it!

The entrance to the Rijksmuseum

Hayden and Isabel

It was a little windy outside (Hayden, Isabel, Stormy, Hunter)

  

We started out by looking at The Night Watch exhibit. It had the very famous painting by Rembrandt and dozens of other Dutch masters. There were massive classical paintings as big as a room! Hunter really liked a painting of the battle of Waterloo that was 38 feet wide with larger than life figures. There were also medieval works, all the way through the modern era. An exhibit had tons of historic model ships along with cannons used by the Dutch East India company in their colonies. One of the model ships had an entire miniature crew of holographic workers which was pretty cool. The museum did a lot of blending modern technology with historic exhibits. A lot of the works had some amazing history and had changed hands numerous times in battles. There was stuff all the way through world war two propoganda posters and a chess set with airplanes for pieces owned by a nazi leader.

Beautiful stained glass just before entering The Night Watch exhibit

Van Gogh's self portrait

This was called the WombTomb - you can get inside it

Chess set owned by Heinrich Himmler - a prominent Nazi leader

Propaganda poster

Latern slides

After we finished in the museum we headed outside to a Christmas market in the Museum Platz. There was an ice rink and many different vendors for food and goods. We walked around, but didn't see anything overly exciting. Waiting by the fire pits was lovely in the colder windy weather.

We decided to next go to the FoodHallen for dinner. It is a food court in a large warehouse that has other stores too. Hunter and I have actually been here before, but when we came it was mostly closed. Hunter and I shared a plate of calamari, tapas, and fries with some sauce on them that was really good. We also got bitterballen, a Dutch meat-based snack. I liked it a lot, but it does have a weird texture.

FoodHallen

Our dinner

After dinner we headed to Hortus Botanicus, a botanical garden, for their night special. It was lit up with Christmas lights and we got to walk around some of the greenhouses. I would love to go back during the day to see and read about more of their plants. We also got warme chocolademelk (hot chocolate) with whip cream after walking around. It was very tasty!

Since it was quite late, Hunter and I headed back to our AirBnB. We stopped at an Albert Heijn just before it closed and got some breakfast type foods for the morning. When we finally got back to our apartment, we were exhausted. We had walked about 13.5 miles and climbed 27 flights of stairs!

December 21, 2018

Day 1 in Amsterdam

Once we arrived, we easily passed through customs and went to buy GVB tickets. The GVB is the transportation system in Amsterdam and includes metros, trams, and buses. It's great because we can buy a different amount of time passes (1 trip, or one through 7 days). We bought a 4 day ticket and a single ticket on the Sprinter to Amsterdam Centraal (the center of the city). The ticket to Amsterdam Centraal is separate because we wanted to take the "fast" way to our AirBnB and the GVB doesn't include Sprinters.

We arrived at our AirBnB and met our host. He was on his way to two exams about European Studies. We dropped off our bags and headed to meet up with Hunter's family at Albert Cuyp, a street market. The market had everything you could imagine from clothes to locally made cheese and much more. We walked the length of the market looking for Hunters parents, stopping at a bakery for a snack! Hunter had an almond croissant and I had an almond cake. We then found Hunter's parents at a cafe with Bailey, his sister. After lunch we walked the market together, browsing some stalls. I came across these cashmere like scarves and couldn't resist - I got 2 for $10! Bailey brought us to the best fresh made stroopwaffle vendor next and we all got delicious stroopwaffles that were still warm and gooey.

The winter market

Really yummy almond cake

The cafe where we met up with Hunter's parents and Bailey 

Once we were done at the market, Bailey showed us her apartment she has been living in for the last 4-ish months (she has almost completed her semester abroad). It was in a large apartment building that had only exchange students. Her apartment was cute and had a nice view out of the window.

Determining where to go next after visiting Baileys apartment (Stormy, Hunter, Chip)

Hunter and I headed back to our AirBnB to take a nap before going to dinner. It was well needed seeing as we both only had about 5 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours. After our nap, we headed to a brewery to meet up with Hunter's family. It turned out that they didn't have a large selection of food, so we decided to try this other burger place. When we arrived at the burger place, they had reservations and no space for our group of 7, so Bailey mentioned this Thai place about a block away and they had space. Hunter and I had a chicken pad thai and a shrimp pad thai. Hayden got an Asian spicy pulled pork roll that looked really good. Isabel and Bailey both had tofu pad thai and Chip and Holly had curries. Everyone enjoyed dinner and liked what they ordered.

The brewery we went to

Pad thai dinner

A quick clip from our dinner

After dinner, Hayden and Isabel mentioned that they wanted ice cream. My first recommendation was metropolitan, a cute little shop we have gone to every time we have been in Amsterdam that serves gelato. Gelato is similar to ice cream but has a higher proportion of milk and a lower proportion of cream and eggs. It also is churned slower, incorporating less air and making it denser than ice cream. Hunter and I ordered gelato with chunks of stroopwaffle and dulce de leche. Hunter's dad Chip tried fig flavoured ice cream. It was delicious and I will probably make Hunter take me back before we leave! After our dessert, we walked into the red light district with Hunter's parents. Hunter and I had previously seen part of the red light district, but this time we walked down an alley that had many more women in windows. It was a little weird and surreal. Prostitution is legal here, but to me, it just is a very weird concept - selling sex to people you don't know.

Walking towards the shop that sells gelato

After that experience, we were getting pretty tired and it was late, so we decided to head back to our AirBnb. The shower at our AirBnB is what you would call a wet shower: it is just in the bathroom, not sectioned off like we do in North America. This is very common in many parts of the world, especially in Asia. Our host leaves a squeegee in the shower so afterwards you can dry off the floor. It worked surprisingly well on the tiles!

Getting to the subway to go back to our AirBnB

The living room of our AirBnB

Traditional steep dutch stairs. We have to climb up 4 of these to get into the apartment

The wet bath

The view from our window

It wasn't long before Hunter and I were alseep. We were both tired from the travel and days activities. Hopefully we will overcome any jetlag after a good nights rest!

Date: December 20, 2018

Getting to Amsterdam

We've previously been to Amsterdam twice, and I have yet to blog about it! Amsterdam was our first ever international (Canada doesn't count as international) trip together and as non-revs. It's a beautiful city that allows for endless walking and always seeing something new.

Tuesday morning (December 18, 2018) I got up at 6am and finished packing my bags and studied a bit before taking my last exam of year 3 term 1. The exam was Project Management. I was quite nervous for it but knew it wasn't going to be too hard because it's just project management. I got permission to start the exam at 9am rather than 1pm so I could make the 3:30pm flight out however I had to stay till 1:30 because my university has a 30 minutes rule (you cannot leave a final exam until 30 minutes after the start time). So at 8:30 I headed to my exam with my bags in tow and started at 9am. I guess I was very prepared for the exam because I was done it in 2.5 hours! I then had to sit and wait another 2 hours till I could leave which was boring but I was so excited to be able to leave early!

Once I was done, I headed to YLW to catch the SEA flight. The flight is an hour long and went smooth. Before departure, I bought a foot long from subway, saving half of it for dinner in Seattle, however, I told the customs agent I had food and then, unfortunately, had the rest of my sandwich confiscated! Peppers and tomatoes are not allowed to cross the border, which my sandwich had. I was quite sad to have to waste it. Once I was through security again, I decided to buy burger king because they have unrestricted soda machines! BK onion rings are the best! After I ate, I started looking at flights and talking with Hunter about the best course of action for getting to Amsterdam. Many of the flights we initially wanted to take had filled up, so I was now trying to get to the east coast for one of those flights. It was finally decided that our best option was to go to JFK, so I took AS18. I love taking Alaska when I can because they have the best $6 snack box - the NorthWest Deli box.

A perfect sunset for my winter break departure from Kelowna

Somewhere over British Columbia

A brightly lit city on my way to JFK

I landed in JFK at about 6am, and continued to check loads while I waited for Hunter to wake up. JFK was getting to be full and a little sketchy, so I headed off to DTW as there were flights to London and Amsterdam with space. When I was trying to get to terminal 2 in JFK, I had to go to a train station and the trains were only working on one track! This was my second time in JFK and I was confused and felt lost, but thankfully I was able to get my phone working and text Hunter for directions because he knows JFK better than I do. It was a good thing I asked him where to go because if not I would have missed my flight by ending up in the wrong terminal!

The flight to DTW was 2 hours and I slept most of it because I didn't get much sleep the night before. Once I got there, I headed to the Westin to use their $15 day pass to shower because I felt pretty gross after a solid 24 hours in the same clothes. Hunter told me about the deal because a lot of their crew members like to use it. It was so nice being able to shower and feel revived. The Westin is attached to the A terminal and even has its own security line when you want to go back to the gates. Hunter arrived at 2:30 and we decided to have lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse because on our first trip to Amsterdam, we ate there and had an awesome soup and sandwich deal. Unfortunately, they didn't have the same deal, but we made it work by each getting soup and sharing a sandwich.

A quick clip from the Westin lobby

Finally got to eat!

We then waited for the flights to begin departing (I napped a little while waiting). Our plan was to watch two flights, one to Amsterdam with 40 economy seats and one to London with 2 delta one seats and 9 in the back. Ideally we wanted the delta one seats and it looked like we were going to get them, but as departure time came closer, people who missed previous flights were rebooked and then some more senior people listed ahead of us and two pilots took the delta one seats, so off to Amsterdam in economy with 40 seats we went!

We sat in 20 C and D (middle row) for the ≈7.5 hour flight. For dinner on the plane I had chicken and Hunter had pasta. Both were yummy and I ate mine up so fast as I was hungry that I only realized half way through I didn't take any photos! After food, we got comfy and slept, well tried to. There was a child a few rows behind us that insisted on this high pitch terrible moan. I was able to get more sleep than Hunter, but only about 4 hours.

We landed at 9:50 am December 20th to an overcast day. It was nice to be back on the ground. Our first day in Amsterdam officially begun!

Date: December 18-19, 2018