Amsterdam, Netherlands

These past few weeks I haven't been blogging much, I was having a bit of an internal struggle.  It is not that the cities that we have seen were not impressionable (they were great).  It is just that we are truly only getting a glimpse of these places and at most we are only exploring a tenth of what they have to offer.  So that being said I will tell you about our trip to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam! Well my first impression was chaos... we drove to the city with the plans of parking our car and renting bikes to explore the city on.  After all Amsterdam is known for being the city of bikes.  Navigating through the city in our car proved very difficult. This was due to the tons of pedestrians, scooters, bikes, trams and taxis.  We learned quickly that there is no logic to who has the right of way on the road.   Eventually we found parking, and were so grateful to park the car we unquestionably prepaid the very expensive meter for the rest of the weekend.  So although it is probably needless to say, it is not recommended to travel by car in Amsterdam.

Bike parking garage.

We rented bikes and quickly began exploring the city.  We explored along the romantic canals, local markets, and eventually stopped at the famous Café Winkel for an absolutely delicious apple pie.

Then, we went into the very crowded and chaotic city center.  Where we walked along the streets and took in the aroma of the frequent coffee shops, local pubs, and red light district. Soon it began to pour and we tired of exploring in the rain.  We road our bikes to a pub and drank some local brews.  After exploring a little more on bike we decided it was time to call it a night and time to remove our soggy cloths and shoes.

On Sunday the weather vastly improved, it was relatively warm and sunny. So we road our bikes through many of the city parks and museum area. We even went on the infamous canal tour.  

Our final impression of Amsterdam was that it is definitely a party city.  Amsterdam is no doubt a fun place to come with a group of friends who are ready and eager to have a late night out on the town.  If you are coming here for something more low key you could do a few things: walk along the canals at night, explore the local parks or museums, and hang out in any of local pubs.