Amsterdam Trip
Wednesday June 27, 2007

         Alrighty then. This is the second part of my three part make-up of information. Today's log is going to be about my Amsterdam trip which was from Friday, the 22nd, to Sunday, the 24th.
         Friday morning I started off as usual, much more optimistic than last week because I assumed now that there would be no problems for me this time around since I had made it to the airport before. This would not end up being the case since God loves putting in his little tricks to make life a little more interesting. It wasn't that big of a deal but was costly. I had made it to St. Jean Joures where I am supposed to take an airport shuttle to the airport. Last time I was there they were picking up passengers every 20 minutes. So, I was glad that I had plenty of time, my flight wasn't supposed to leave for another two hours or so. I make it to the shuttle stop and see immediately a piece of paper covering the times for the stop. It's all in French and although I am getting a grasp on French there were some words I didn't know and I hadn't brought a French dictionary considering I was going to Amsterdam. Anyway, I didn't know what it said but luckily most people in France speak english (even in Toulouse which doesn't have hardly any English people). I asked someone next to me what it said and they, with some broken english, told me that the workers were on strike and the shuttle would not be there for another 4 hours. I was now returning to my freak-out stage of the previous week but just figured I'd take a Taxi. Luckily I saw a Taxi very soon afterwards and waved him down. I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
         The plane ride over to Amsterdam was very uneventful. The only difference about this trip was that I did not really know where the Amsterdam airport was in relation to Amsterdam and didn't know where Chris was going to be. (We don't plan things out very well.) I made it to the airport, went through NO customs, and tried to talk to Chris via text messages, but I hate text messages so I called him. He told me to take a train from the Airport to Amsterdam Centrale and then go to the Van Gogh museum. So I thought I'd take a little rest and have some Burger King in the airport. I was really amazed at first when I sat down to eat that EVERYONE around me was smoking cigarettes. I was trying to figure out if this was truly the average but then realized I had accidently sat down in the smoking section. I just thought it was humerous.
         I got on the train, without paying, assuming that the trains in Amsterdam were just like the Gatwick Express which took me from the Gatwick Airport to London. There, you can get on the train and when the guy who checks your tickets comes by, you can just pay there. Anyway, no one came by and I ended up not having to pay for the train. I rule!
         After that I had a whole lot of trouble trying to figure out where to go for tram/bus/metro tickets and where I needed to go even after I found out how to get tickets. I finally found the right place and got myself some tram tickets to the Van Gogh museum. It was raining by the time I got there and had to hide under an arc outside the museum until I met up with Chris. We started walking around looking for an internet cafe and finally found one. We booked out hotel. (Yes Mom, I know it was late but we were having trouble keeping in contact with one another so I figured the best time to get the reservation would be there. If we couldn't get one booked, I mean, it's Amsterdam, you're expected to pass out somewhere randomly in the middle of the night. If you don't do that you're missing the Amsterdam experience.)
         We decided to head towards the tram station to get 48 hour tram tickets. After that we wanted to go to our room and drop off our stuff. After getting very turned around for a bit we head on the right track and found the correct tram route to our hotel. It is now POURING rain so we ran around trying to get to our hotel in this weather and by the time we get to the hotel we are DRENCHED. We sat down for a bit, dryed ourselves off and relaxed. Eventually the rain died down and we took a tram to Rembrandt Square. We wondered around for a bit looking at stuff and settled down in a pub. We wondered around for a bit more, got some dinner, went to another pub and it was getting late so we went to the nearest tram station only to realize that the buses stop around 12:30 so we had to walk back to our hotel which was fun, but it did take a long time.
         Chris set his alarm to 9pm instead of 9am so we slept in a lot which was disappointing but at least I got some well needed sleep. We woke up and wandered up and down the main street near our hotel and didn't find any cheap breakfast food. After that we saw this really cool sight which I unfortunately forgot to get pictures of. It was a crane removing a tree from the ground. It was just really funny watching this machine hold this tree while passers-by are all standing still far away not sure when it was going to come lunging towards them. We watched for a while but then the crane set it down on the road so we could pass. We started heading dowards the central part of Amsterdam and just decided to get off somewhere randomly and wander around. We went to some italian restraunt for breakfast and then kept wandering around looking at stuff, seing some very beautiful sights. We saw this awesome moving pub. It's hard to explain, so I won't but I do have pictures of it. You'll hopefully get to see those tomorrow. We were jealous and so we went to a pub as well.
         We walked farther to downtown and took pictures, took in the sights. Chris bought a box of cubans and I saw the craziest thing. In Amsterdam they have outdoor urinals. I have a picture of it too. It's litterally an outdoor urinal. It looks like an X from above and all four of the sections of the X there is a hole to urinate in. I couldn't believe people were actually using it. I don't have any idea how drunk I would have to be in order to feel comfortable using one of those. Gladly I didn't find out on this trip. We wandered around some more and went back to rembrandt square and visited this really cool victorian style pub. I decided I wanted to go see Ocean's 13 which we went and saw. I was crossing my fingers hoping it was going to be in English and it was with Dutch subtitles. The subtitle were very annoying at first but I got used to them very quickly and actually don't really remember them. The movie was decent, much better than Ocean's 12. I actually enjoyed it.
         After the movie we did more wandering around looking at stuff and went back to our same victorian style pub which now had, since it was dark, the lights turned down, random club lights everywhere and very loud techno/rap. It was so surprisingly different. We went to another pub and did nothing. More wandering, and then we walked back to our hotel.
         The following day was very uneventful. I basically just took a tram to the trainstation, took the train back to the airport, and took the airplane back home. All in all it was a decent trip. I didn't have as much fun as I thought I was going to and had nowhere near as much fun as London but I still enjoyed it. I will hopefully have pictures up tomorrow but the way things work around here I might not be able to with the who knows how many problems that arise.