But on to Amsterdam! What a beautiful city! I know now that I will adore Venice (If I ever get to go, on this journey or later in life) because my favorite part of Amsterdam was the canals. They just added so much beauty to the city. I've realized that I could never live in a landlocked place. I need to be near the water. Even just having the moats at the castle helps. But the canals...oh so beautiful.
We spent a total a three days in this gorgeous city. We left Well on Friday at the ungodly hour of 7 am and arrived in Amsterdam about 2 hours later. I slept most of the bus ride, thankfully. Unfortunately, there was no time to rest when we arrived and we were shuttled to the hostel to drop off our luggage and then taken into the main part of the city where we walked to Dam Square and split up into small walking tour groups. This was nice, but would have been more enjoyable if we were not all so exhausted. I did get to see the oldest wooden house in Amsterdam as well as the former home of John Adams.
After the walking tour we headed over to the Rijksmuseum, a Dutch national museum that holds a large collection of art from the Golden Age. Unfortunately, the museum has been undergoing renovation since 2003 (!) so only a small wing was open. They chose to display "the best of the best" since so much of the museum was closed though so it was still very nice.
Immediately after the Rijksmuseum, we walked over to an Indonesian restaurant. Dulcia, the director of the castle program, is from Indonesia and apparently the restaurant we went to was one of her favorites. Even though it's been over a week since that meal, I can still say it was the best one I've had here so far.
After dinner we were finally able to go back to the hostel and sleep. The hostel was huge and much nicer than I expected. Although we did find a piece of old bread in the lamp hanging from the ceiling.
The next day we went to the dutch Heritage museum all together. Our tour guide was very nice and informative but I would have liked to explore the museum on my own. In the courtyard of the museum was a miniature version of the I AMsterdam sign so of course we had to take a picture!
Tyler, Ali, Johnny and I went to lunch together afterwards and found a great little panini cafe with awesome hot chocolate.
Later that day I went with a group to the Van Gogh museum. This was by far my favorite activity in Amsterdam. Van Gogh only painted for a period of about 5 years and during that time he produced over 900 pieces. About 200 are on permanent loan to the museum. When Van Gogh died he left the paintings to his brother, Theo, who died only 6 months after Vincent. Theo left the paintings to his wife and son and it was his son, Vincent's nephew, who founded the museum and loaned the paintings. I was so glad to be given the opportunity to walk around the museum on my own. the paintings were arranged chronologically which really showed Van Gogh's progression from dark browns and pretty colorless paintings to the swirls and colors that most people think of. We were asked to pick a favorite painting and mine was titled Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees.
On Sunday a group of us spent the day in the area around Dam Square just exploring and trying to get our own feel for the city. We went to the full sized I AMsterdam sign and did another photo shoot like typical tourists.
We were able to make it back to the castle safe and sound that night. Amsterdam was absolutely beautiful and so much fun. I'm planning on going back weekend after next. Our World Drama is going to see a performance of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in Dutch. It should interesting and I'm curious to see how well I'll be able to follow it since it's in another language. I'm staying put at the castle for this weekend so I'll hopefully have time to catch up on the blog. Stay tuned!
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