Bikes, Coffeeshops and the Red Light District.

My latest travel adventure was to the wondrous city of Amsterdam. I went on the student union planned trip and will be glad to never sit on a coach again. We left Swansea on Thursday night and rode a coach to the other side of England to the port at Dover. We then preceded to take ferry to France, drove through Belgium, and then through the Netherlands. After driving through the night and taking many stops on the way, we got to Amsterdam at like 10 a.m. I'm amazed at the awesome planning that went into this trip because come to find out, the first 30 people who signed up for the trip got put in the crappy hostel, which included me. The other good planning was that the guys from the student union that escorted us on the trip didn't know where our crappy hostel was. After taking many wrong turns and asking for directions, we walked from the nice hostel to ours because our bus driver refused to take us anywhere closer to the hostel. After we finally found it, the girls I stayed with and I got the shaft on rooms. We were the first to get a room but also got the worst one. Our room was right by the stairs, on the 3rd floor, by swinging doors, had no shower door, smelled like rotten eggs, and didn't have a TV like all the students got. The TV wasn't a big deal because we wouldn't have watched it anyway, but still. Needless to say, it was an interesting first hostel experience. The place also smelled like a litter box, which we found out it was because there was a cat that lived there and roamed around. One of the mornings we found it on the counter by the breakfast food. That was a little sketchy to me.

After we got settled in our room, a bunch of us set out to explore the city. Leslie, Courtney and I ended up getting iamsterdam passes, which got you into a bunch of museums, free public transport and discounts on a lot of other places for 48 euros. The first day we went to the Rijksmuseum and the Anne Frank House. We also ate at an Indonesian restaurant with a bunch of other people and then we walked to the infamous Red Light District. It took us a while to actually find the Red Light District, but we eventually found it and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I knew a lot of what it was going to be like, but it was a lot more tame, probably because we were on the main street instead of going down off streets. Some of us ended up going back to our hostel earlier than other and stopped by some street vendors and got some awesome pastries, which we ended up getting everyday after that.

On Saturday, we got up early and headed off to the Van Gogh museum. The best part was we got to see The Starry Night painting exhibition. I'm glad we were there at that time because it is an awesome paining. It was also cool to see the other Van Gogh paintings since I'm a fan of his. We also went to a market up by the Heineken Brewery. It was a pretty sweet outdoor market and I got 2 scarves for 8 euros, which was the start and finish of my shopping there. Then we took a tram up to the central station and took a canal cruise/tour of the city. It was really cool and am glad we were able to do it. We were then off to the Diamond Museum and the House of Bols. The House of Bols is described "experience a journey through the world of cocktails and genever. Taste, see, smell, hear, touch, and become familiar with the exciting world of bartending." I think the best part about it was that we got a cocktail and some samples of the different flavors of liquor that they produced. Then that night, a bunch of us girls got together and exchanged gifts for the secret valentine's drawing we had. Then some of us went out to eat and then went to a pub and relaxed.

Sunday, we got up early and were off to find the diamond factory, which ended up being a lot further away than I thought it was going to be. However, it was definitely worth the walk! We got to see different cuts and sizes of diamonds and then we got to try on thousands of dollars worth of diamond rings. It was pretty amazing, but can't even fathom people spending $35,000 for a ring. We then trekked back to get souvenirs and then load the bus for another 13 hour ride back to Swansea. On the way back our bus driver decided to turn the heat on high and it was unbearably hot on the bus and he hit a curb while parking the bus and broke the door. Overall though, it was an awesome trip!