Amsterdam and Bruxelles

First of all I would like to apologize for the HUGE delay in between this post and my previous one.  March became pretty busy with classes ending, coursework being due and friends visiting.  Since Wales, I spent most of my time in London, going to class, writing papers, finishing lab reports, getting sick, etc.  The past 5 days, however, were spent abroad.  On Saturday the 26th, I ventured from London, through the chunnel, to Brussels, Belgium.  I traveled with 5 friends I met here in London, 3 of whom also go to UCL.  

I woke up prior to the crack of dawn (5am) to shower, finish packing, and catch a bus to St. Pancras train station.  I arrived with time to spare, but some of us didn't.  After some security fast-tracking by the kind Eurostar security staff, we all made the train in time.  OFF TO BRUSSELS!  The train was uneventful, but I did get to go UNDER the English channel in the "Chunnel Tunnel" as the train manager called it.

Our train was a little late to arrive, but when we did arrive we began our adventure in Belgium.  A long walk from the train station took us to Grand Place which is a major attraction in Brussels.  It is a huge open square surrounded by old, majestic buildings, and filled with tables for restaurants and people selling flowers.  We found our hostel nearby, but needed to check in at an alternate location.  We ventured fourth, eventually finding this location, dropped our bags off and went to go find waffles.  Belgian waffles in Belgium did not dissapoint.  I went for a waffle with bananas and nutella (a boat load of nutella. She loaded that stuff on, but I wasn't complaining.).  They supplied you with a little miniature plastic fork which didn't make things easy and I eventually took a more hands on approach as I felt like I could not eat this treat fast enough.  After waffles, we took a seat at a nearby cafe to enjoy a coffee and figure out our plans for the evening.  The hostel supplied us with a map with white font and a neon orange background.  As you can imagine it was pretty difficult to read, but it worked out in the end.  We decided to try and find this creative street with some stuff that sounded pretty cool (a robot chicken comes to mind, but I can't remember exactly. Maybe an electric waterfall?), but we ended up only finding closed shops (it was a saturday), a little square, and prostitutes (WOO!).  We kept walking.  We found the main shopping drag, which seems to go on forever and a supermarket IN a mall before checking into the hostel and figuring out dinner plans.  CHEZ (shay) LEON was apparently the place to go for Mussels in Brussels, which we decided was the thing to do, and we couldn't have been more right.  Mussels, cheese, snail butter (sounds gross, but let me assure you it is NOT, and a little garlic comprised my dish.  My trip was quickly becoming a tour of food, but once again I was not complaining (but my waistline might be).  Post-'Mussels in Brussels' we headed to Celtica, a bar with 1 euro bottles and 2 euro pints. YES PLEASE.  After being used to the outrageous prices of pints in London, to get a pint for 2 euro felt like Christmas.  We waited around for my boy Stuart Innes's live acoustic stylings, but he sucked, so after plenty of dollar beers we headed back to the hostel, but not before an order of famous fries.  It is customary to put mayonnaise on your fries in Belgium and Holland, but I opted out of that (I tried it later and was actually really good. Their mayonnaise is completely different than mayo in the states.) and went for a garlic sauce.  The fries hit the spot and I went right to sleep.

The next morning started EARLY once again.  It was daylight savings time in Europe, so we needed to be extra careful and make sure we woke up at the right time in order to catch our train to Amsterdam (which had to be no more than 24 hours after our arrival in Brussels, because of how our train tickets worked.).  There was a little mix up initially, we thought it was 7am when it was really 6am so instead of being late we turned out to be extra ambitious and we ended up catching the first train to Amsterdam for Leg 2 of this adventure.  Our walk to the train station took us through Grand Place again, but it was much different this time around.  Since it was barely 7am on the day of daylight savings, there were about 10 people (including us) in the huge open square.  It is probably one of the coolest things I have seen on this trip.  The sun was rising and it was just so cool seeing two completely different settings: the bustling, busy mid-day and the desolate early morning.  We continued to the train station, through a market being set up, and onto the train. Onward to the Netherlands!

We arrived in Amsterdam around 11.  This train was much slower and made many, many more stops, but the Belgian and Dutch countrysides were beautiful.  After arriving we decided to walk to our hostel again, even though our directions told us to take a tram.  This gave us an understanding for the city and allowed me to form the following first impressions.

1. Let's start with what everyone knows: Marijuana is legal to sell, distribute, and use (not in public, but in "coffee shops").

2. The people of Amsterdam really, REALLY love their bikes.  There are way more bikes on the road than cars.  They don't have parking garages for cars, but they do have parking garages for bikes.  I'm not kidding.

3. Amsterdam is gorgeous.  The city is similar to Venice, but in a much more organized fashion.  There are many canals filled with tour boats and canal buses.  Ok so it isn't that much like Venice, but it has a lot of canals.

We found our hostel after much walking and map consulting and set our bags down.  The stairs were super narrow and steep, and the hostel was just what I expected for 14 euro a night.   We ventured fourth, hungry (believe it or not), and continued our food tour-- I mean adventure.  Pannenkoeken, or dutch pancakes, are a speciality of The Netherlands, so that's what we went seeking.  After a helpful local pointed us in the right direction, we happened upon "Pancakes!" for our first taste of food in Amsterdam.  "Pancakes!" set the bar pretty high, too high in actuality.  For those of you that aren't too familiar with pannenkoeken, it is a huge plate sized pancake (similar to a crepe, but thicker) and can be sweet or savory.  I went for savory as it was lunchtime: cheese, tomato and bacon.  This, to date, is the best pancake I have ever had.  It was perfectly crispy on the outside, the bacon was one with the pancake, but crispy at the same time and the tomatoes were juicy and delicious.  Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel to check in, ended up napping and we met our bunk roommates, a lovely couple from Melbourne who were traveling the world (literally) for, get this, AN ENTIRE YEAR.  They were so nice and very cool.  Bridget and Olmo were their names.  From the hostel we met back up with the rest of our group, and formulated evening plans.  We wandered around Amsterdam, enjoying the scenery and each other's company before deciding on dinner.  After dinner, Greg and I went to find a place to watch the Kentucky v. UNC game (Greg goes to UK) while the others turned in for the night.  After a very exciting game (I never though I would be able to watch march madness, live, in Amsterdam.) we headed back to the hostel for some shut-eye.

The next stay started pretty late in the morning, but started with a nice pancake from 'Sara's Pancake House.'  Sara was actually the one to make our pancakes, and while they were good, I didn't like it was much as my previous one.  From there, we went to the Anne Frank house.  This is the house that she kid in for two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.  It is also where she wrote all? of her journal.  This was really amazing, and really well done.  They had descriptions in each of the rooms with videos from people that knew or worked in the house with the family.  The original, movable bookshelf was there along with the original wallpaper in Anne and Margot's room.  The original red-checkered, diary was also on display.  It is such a tragic story and to see the house was really breathtaking and thought-provoking.  After this depressing shock to our system, we did some more exploring before dinner.  That night we why wanted to find a place to watch a little live music.  Across from the hostel was a little bar that promised live music every night. PERFECT. We watched the B-Funk jam session for a few hours before walking across the street to the hostel from some shut eye.

My last full day started with a pancake (believe it or not), and after that we went to THE HEINEKEN EXPERIENCE, which is located at the brewery which was formerly used to brew the world famous Heineken beer.  This was pretty cool.  We learned the history, went through a simulation where we got 'brewed' into beer, and, of course, received some 'free' samples at the end.  A couple people even gave us their tokens, so instead of only getting two samples we each got three!  We kept of this afternoon buzz b heading to another bar before heading to a little italian place for dinner (delicious but expensive).  My last night ended with traditional dutch fries (Vlammse fries), with ketchup and mayo (i'm serious, it was good.)

My last day felt too rushed and I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have.  My flight flew out of Amsterdam-Schipol at 240pm, but I didn't know what train to take to the train station or what train to take to the airport, but I still wanted to see the Van Gogh museum.  No pancake this morning, which is upsetting, but I feel like 3 was sufficient.  The Van Gogh museum was very cool.  They have the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world, and it was interesting to see his style grow and develop.  They did a good job explaining his techniques and influences in a lot of different pieces.  I would have liked to spend more time there, but I needed to make it to the airport in time.  It ended up being really easy, and I got to the airport about 20 minutes earlier than anticipated.  Too easy.  I had an amazing time in both Brussels and Amsterdam.  I could not have asked for better food, adventures and company.

At this very moment, I am on my way to Paris, going backwards at 120 mph and typing a blog post like a champ.  My family is around me and I couldn't be more excited to continue my adventures.  Sorry that this post is so.damn.long.  I won't be mad if you didn't read all of it, or if it took you a couple tries.  Thanks for reading!!  I promise my next post will be sooner and not so lengthy.