After departing from Gerald's, I headed further north with Luke. In fact, we went way north. We got so far north that we got lost, fell off a bike, and attacked by a militia of ducks. But, before that we went to Fulda to pick up Kevin Grant. I have known Kevin for about 7 years now. We first met up in Speech9 during my Freshman year at Damien. After spending a cozy night in his basement, we gathered our belongings to head north; to The Netherlands.
Amsterdam is beautiful. Even beyond all of the things that it is notorious for offering with open arms. It is similar to New York when looking at the Dutch architecture. But, the canals are really what set it apart. When we first got there, we simply grabbed a bit of pizza, then headed right to a coffeeshop. By then, we had already considered it to be: "Probably, like, one of the best cities I have ever been to". Or, in Kevin's terms, "Amsterdam is amazing". We were there merely two hours and we saw the equivalent of about 1 square, suburban block.
It was pleasant to just roam around the city to see where all of the nooks and crannies would lead us. We often just ended up doing this without even thinking about it. We would set out for a place, then end up on the other side of the town. At one point, we even found ourselves outside of the city limits. When you go outside the city limits of Amsterdam, I am pretty sure that says something. Perhaps, it means to turn around and go back in to see some more of Amsterdam.
There were many strange things that we came across. I made a paper boat, then we tried to bomb it. We were attacked by some ducks. There was an abnormally huge chess board. And, finally, the menu at the African restaurant.
Our second day, we pedaled around town on bikes. It was quite the experience considering we got up to see Amsterdam at around 11. We had already been in The Netherlands the entire day before. But, it was a whole different story with the bikes. We ended up cruising the town for about 5 hours. The city layout is poor. The streets are far too confusing (this can be confirmed by a good friend studying Urban Planning at MIT). The only way we could track our steps was through using different coffeeshops as points of reference. It usually sounded something like, "I'm prety sure we went there before The Grasshopper, but it may have been after Homegrown".
During our confusion, I stopped to pick up a pillowcase at a local bizarre. I don't even think I have one pillow, but I got two. They were nicely finished. The worst part was trying to figure out how to put the locks on the bike. It always took so long. Sometimes, it would take up to 6 minutes with two people working on it. Things also got interesting when I pulled up in front of a crowd of people, stopped the bike, and simply fell over without putting either of my feet down. It hadn't even occurred to me that the thing wouldn't balance.
It became more and more noticeable how much we were able to explore Amsterdam when we spent our last night sitting on the street corner eating 27 euros worth of food from the market. We went in there in order to keep the costs down. I mean, I had just eaten 48 ribs from the all-you-can-eat ribs place the night before. So the next night, we kept it simple. We only took the bare necessities: 14 bread rolls, 3 packages of salami, 2 packages of liverwurst, 16 slices of cheese, a jar of asparagus, 16 donuts, 4 giant raisin cookies, a cucumber, two tomatoes, and a liter of juice. That night, we saw Amsterdam. The next morning, we ended up in the exact same shoes.
On the way back, we stopped in Koln to see the dome. It was quite impressive to see how such a massive building survived the air raids of WWII.
Amsterdam is beautiful. Even beyond all of the things that it is notorious for offering with open arms. It is similar to New York when looking at the Dutch architecture. But, the canals are really what set it apart. When we first got there, we simply grabbed a bit of pizza, then headed right to a coffeeshop. By then, we had already considered it to be: "Probably, like, one of the best cities I have ever been to". Or, in Kevin's terms, "Amsterdam is amazing". We were there merely two hours and we saw the equivalent of about 1 square, suburban block.
It was pleasant to just roam around the city to see where all of the nooks and crannies would lead us. We often just ended up doing this without even thinking about it. We would set out for a place, then end up on the other side of the town. At one point, we even found ourselves outside of the city limits. When you go outside the city limits of Amsterdam, I am pretty sure that says something. Perhaps, it means to turn around and go back in to see some more of Amsterdam.
There were many strange things that we came across. I made a paper boat, then we tried to bomb it. We were attacked by some ducks. There was an abnormally huge chess board. And, finally, the menu at the African restaurant.
Our second day, we pedaled around town on bikes. It was quite the experience considering we got up to see Amsterdam at around 11. We had already been in The Netherlands the entire day before. But, it was a whole different story with the bikes. We ended up cruising the town for about 5 hours. The city layout is poor. The streets are far too confusing (this can be confirmed by a good friend studying Urban Planning at MIT). The only way we could track our steps was through using different coffeeshops as points of reference. It usually sounded something like, "I'm prety sure we went there before The Grasshopper, but it may have been after Homegrown".
During our confusion, I stopped to pick up a pillowcase at a local bizarre. I don't even think I have one pillow, but I got two. They were nicely finished. The worst part was trying to figure out how to put the locks on the bike. It always took so long. Sometimes, it would take up to 6 minutes with two people working on it. Things also got interesting when I pulled up in front of a crowd of people, stopped the bike, and simply fell over without putting either of my feet down. It hadn't even occurred to me that the thing wouldn't balance.
It became more and more noticeable how much we were able to explore Amsterdam when we spent our last night sitting on the street corner eating 27 euros worth of food from the market. We went in there in order to keep the costs down. I mean, I had just eaten 48 ribs from the all-you-can-eat ribs place the night before. So the next night, we kept it simple. We only took the bare necessities: 14 bread rolls, 3 packages of salami, 2 packages of liverwurst, 16 slices of cheese, a jar of asparagus, 16 donuts, 4 giant raisin cookies, a cucumber, two tomatoes, and a liter of juice. That night, we saw Amsterdam. The next morning, we ended up in the exact same shoes.
On the way back, we stopped in Koln to see the dome. It was quite impressive to see how such a massive building survived the air raids of WWII.
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