I caught a bus from Granada to Madrid (5 hours) Wednesday night at 1pm, took drammamine (thank you Liz!) and slept the entire time. In Madrid, I expertly navigated the metro and got to the massive Madrid airport (step down MIA and O'Hare -- you have to get on a highway to switch terminals in Madrid) way before my flight. The French were on strike apparently, so planes were all delayed. I missed my connection (barely) because my flight was over 3 hours late! But instead of catching one five hours later (thank you Lufthansa for rescheduling me on that flight...), a magic flight person printed me a boarding pass for one that left half an hour after I arrived in Frankfurt. After, again, mastering public transit in foreign languages, I got to my hostel in Amsterdam and went out for Heinekens with Cameron, my best friend from Haverford who is studying in Galway, Ireland. Every city in Europe I've been to has such pride in its beer...
Instead of giving a play by play of the whole weekend, I'll just insert some photos. Basic trip details: five friends of mine from Haverford who are studying in a variety of cities in Europe (two from London, one from Milan, one from Berlin, and one from Galway) all met me in Amsterdam for the weekend. Cameron, Pam and I stayed in a hostel together and met up with the three boys (James, Max, and Will) throughout the days.
The whole sign says: I amsterdam with the "I am" in red. Obviously ridiculously touristy, but it is a sweet sign.
We went to an amazing beads store. I'm not normally a huge beads fan or anything, but this was an awesome store. And the store was also completely organized by color which excites me. They had SO MANY BEADS. My dad would have loved this store.
This is essentially everything Amsterdam: clogs and tulips (the clogs are really seeds to grow tulips).
Also, tons of canals in Amsterdam. How did they even begin to build this city?
Saturday morning we went to this amazing pancake place. We do not have pancakes or waffles or anything in Spain and so they were triple amazing here. Mine had bananas, chocolate and whipped cream. Oh and speaking of breakfast desserts, the waffles they have in the little bakeries coated in chocolate and heated up are absolutely delicious.
Spent most of Saturday looking at shops like this. They had the silliest stuff -- little metal men to hold your pot up when it's hot, strange pig-shaped things, rubber duckie headphones, etc. It was colorful and wonderful. There were also a lot of robots.
This is the photo representation of all the fun clubs and bars we went to. Seriously Amsterdam is so much fun! We met lots of strange people from many different countries and our hostel was next to the red light district which was pretty surreal. Those girls actually stand in windows with red lights... Who knew that was reality? ALSO I will use it as a segue to say that half the fun of the weekend was the people (including James, Max, and Will) and it was GREAT to see my beautiful friends again.Other notes without pictures: Went to the Van Gogh museum and it was pretty spectacular. Such beautiful paintings -- the brushwork is so phenomenal. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures or I would post them. In terms of being "cultural", we also went to the large park, which was starkly majestic in the winter time, and saw the tulip market (and the tulip museum actually). The city was just beautiful and we spent a lot of time just walking up and down the streets and over all the canals. My trip home was wonderful too -- my flight was canceled and so I got rescheduled on a direct flight that left earlier and got me home much sooner than I had planned. Also, since my travel time from Granada to Amsterdam was so lengthy, I started and finished Three Cups of Tea which is an incredible book and also began reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime which I also like. And now I'm home in Granada and I love it. Studying abroad = best idea ever.
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