Travel Update! - October 6th

October 6th, 2017

Today I sit in the Paris metro station. I spent the last 8 hours on an uncomfortable bus from Amsterdam. And what a ride that was too. Just kiddinggg. The bus was fine. I'm pretty sure I didn't talk to a single person the whole time. As I type this, I'm on the Paris metro in hopes of maybe just maybe getting a picture of the Eiffel Tower at sunrise. You know, hopefully. (I did make it,  if you didn't realize that yet)

But before I head off on Paris talk, let me recap Amsterdam. Or rather, Hoofddorp. Before I left London, I called up my uncle Rob, who is from holland, to see if he knew anywhere I could stay while there. His sister, Ria quickly jumped at the opportunity. You see, I met Ria when I was very little, at Rob and Mary's wedding. She seemed to have a good impression of me then so when I mentioned visiting she was more than willing to lend the bed. While there, I met her husband Richard, who's English is oftentimes hard to understand, and her 17 year old son, Roel, who spent a majority of his time on his phone (teenagers, am I right?) I'm mostly joking. He also spent a lot of time playing soccer, which was fun to watch. Hoofddorp is this little industrial town 25 minutes out of Amsterdam. Very clean, very quiet, very kind. I great place to raise kids, I'm sure. A remarkable contrast to the city of Amsterdam though.

I spent 2 days in the city while I was there. The first was spent unintentionally wandering through the red light district and getting a lay of the city, while the other was spent at museums, at cafes and in the street, culturing myself. I ended up at the van gogh museum (which I highly recommend!). No starry night though, as the had loaned it out to NY, but I did get to see all of his self portraits and the sunflowers and stuff. Super cool.

You know, I was surprisingly unimpressed with Amsterdam. It was cute, and different and very weedy, but it seemed almost too weedy. Like people were coming there just for weed and not for the rest of the city. Super strange experience. I'm sure it could have been much better if I were with people or perhaps partaking in the whole weed experience, but Amsterdam just seemed to fall flat. Don't get me wrong though! I had a great time in Holland and the dutch people were incredibly kind to me. I just, you know, wasn't too impressed with the city. I did have a fabulous waffle and some great fries though, so that's always a plus.