Back to the Canals Again

Nick had suggested the 6:30 am train to Brussels and for some reason we agreed with him, seemingly forgetting how painful every previous early trip was. 

With a slight McDonald’s hangover, we rolled out of bed two and a half hours after we had gone to sleep. We made it to the metro station before the trains had even started running. The 5am occupants of Felix Faure metro station included three bleary eyed travelers, and two men dressed in suits laughing and pointing at a young man who severely stumbled and swayed his way along the opposite platform before puking. 

The minute wait time kept increasing instead of decreasing so we started having a taxi versus train debate. Train eventually won, and luckily the train came at the right time, we made our connecting train with ten seconds to spare, and made it to the central train station with enough time to print our tickets from a kiosk and get settled. 

We took TGV for 50 euro to Brussels. It’s a high speed train that goes around 200 miles per hour, I think. We took it too early to see the landscape rush by, but it only took two hours to get from Paris to Brussels. Even though Amsterdam is much closer to Brussels than to Paris, the regular trains to Amsterdam also took two hours. 

We hadn’t booked our tickets from Brussels to Amsterdam, but we were able to navigate ticket counters to successfully book the next leg of our trip extraordinarily last minute (it actually was really easy, we just went up to the counter and asked for three tickets to Amsterdam. It just felt cool being self-sufficient without using internet, computers, or printers to book our trip.) 

We got coffee and baguettes from the train station and continued our journey back to the Netherlands. We had to transfer trains twice, but we made it to Amsterdam Centraal by lunchtime. Hostels were outrageously expensive in Amsterdam for the days we were there, so we decided to spend a little bit more for the convenience of a hotel. We had no idea where it was, so we asked three different tourists information centers who gave us three different tram numbers. We picked the last guy’s tram number because he sounded most confident. 

Like most Dutch buildings, the hotel was very narrow and very tall. The stairs had no handrails and were unbelievably steep. By the third floor, impossibly, they got even tinier and steeper so that you could only cling onto the step with your toes, while your top heavy backpacks threaten to topple you right back down to the bottom. 

The room had three twin beds, a TV, and a window the size of a postage stamp. The bathroom was shared with everyone else on the floor, including the guy who left his cartoon marijuana leaf boxers hanging from the heater every morning. 

We found a café nearby and ate a lovely lunch with our daily cappuccino.

We couldn’t agree on anything to do and tripadvisor was giving us weird recommendation/star/comment combinations again. Eventually we decided to go to the Heineken Experience just to do something and then we could figure out what we wanted to do after. We bought tickets and they gave us these wristbands that had three color coded tokens on it: two for a small beer and one for a free glass.

We got in line to get in and handed the lady our tickets. 

The lady froze. “Keisha?” she asked. It turned out she and Keisha went to elementary school together in the Netherlands and hadn’t seen each other for ten years. 

They talked briefly and then she offered us more wristbands. “You guys want more beer?” We all had one band on each wrist. 

The Heineken Experience ended up taking most of our evening. The first part walked you through the history and included “artifacts” from the founders and their various awards, etc. The second part walked you through the process of making Heineken. They even had a stable with the Heineken Horses. One of the best parts was the ‘ride’ where they put you in a room and made you into bottled beer. It reminded me kind of like Star Tours/Soaring Over California at Disneyland. The ground moved and tipped and they sprayed you with water and hot air. It was very interactive and the whole roomful of people were giggling and having a good time. Then they gave us all a glass of beer and taught us how to properly pour and taste Heineken. Heineken was never really the first beer I would reach for, but I actually really liked it! Then we went through a room that played all the Heineken advertisements and it occurred to me that we paid to be advertised to. 

 

 

Then there was the Heineken Bar that had cool electronic coasters. We used all four of our tokens. We then left to get dinner, but not before collecting our six free glasses. 

We got dönnerkebab for dinner and then went to Leidseplein square near our hotel. The square was filled with lots of outdoor seating for all the bars. So we all grabbed a Bavaria Beer and just sat in the square talking until we finished our beer and decided to go to bed.

We took Amsterdam very easy, most of our trip was walking around by the canals, drinking Heineken, and eating food.

The next morning we got up, had an English breakfast at the square (yum eggs and beans on toast!) and then walked over to the Anne Frank House.

 I've been before (and had fallen down the stairs last time, much to Shannon's amusement). It's a very powerful museum and I think it's very important to see. It was packed with people shuffling through each room quietly. It's quite a tragic story and seeing the actual house and the actual rooms makes it all a lot more vivid and real.

I have two backpacks and to drag them around airports and train stations I carry the big one on my back and the small one on my front. Nick made fun of me for how silly it looked a lot, but at the Anne Frank House, you were actually required to wear the backpack on your front.

We spent the rest of the day walking around. We souvenir shopped at the Flower Market, a street with a bunch of stands selling tulip bulbs (among other things). We walked along the canals and appreciated Amsterdam in Autumn. It's hard for the pictures to do it justice, but the leaves were changing colors and floating down the canals and the air was crisp and it was quite lovely.

That evening we decided to walk through the Red Light District. We went into a sex shop and were quite immature about it. We walked past all the sex and drugs shops and prostitutes in windows. We grabbed a pint of Heineken at a bar in the Red Light District and then headed back to the hotel. Keisha's sister told us they were trying to close down the Red Light District a little bit, so I'm glad we got a chance to say we saw it.

On our last morning, we ate an English Breakfast at Pancake Corner again. We did some more souvenir shopping. We walked to Dam Square and took in the sights and appreciated the street performers. We ate more Mannekin Pis. 

Dam Square

We then caught the train back to Utrecht, which took only about 20 minutes. It was crazy to think that we had been in Utrecht three weeks before. Once we got settled again at Keisha’s sister’s house, the three of us biked to the city on two bikes. We enjoyed dinner by the canal and then biked back. 

We spent the next day in Utrecht as well. We attempted to go to the Domtoren, but alas a professor had reserved it for a lecture. We instead spent the day café hopping for food, coffee, and wine. We also went shopping for a bit.

 

Lunch at a canalside cafe

 My Bubbles impersonation

I took Nick to the train station early the next morning so that he could get to the airport to fly home. “See you in California!” I told him. 

I then took the bus back to Keisha’s sister’s house. Keisha and I packed up and then went back to Utrecht where we enjoyed chips drenched in curry and fritesause from Mannekin Pis while walking around a market and the canals. We ate at Mannekin Pis a lot this trip. They're shops with open storefronts and you order fries that they fry up fresh for you right there. They put a bunch of fries in a cone and then drench it in a sauce of your choice. My favorite was the curry. Keisha always got fritesause, a slightly flavored mayonaise. 

 

We then found a really cute café right by the canal that was filled with stacks and stacks of CDs. There were benches out front with colorful pillows where we drank our very rich coffees people watching and overlooking the canal. 

I then said bye to Keisha and caught my train to Köln to begin the second half of my trip solo.