Back from Amsterdam!

A few of us went to Amsterdam for the weekend this past weekend and it was an awesome time! The only drawback was the transport and the accommodation (sort of a big thing but not really) as you'll see in the pictures the hotel was pretty awful but we got what we paid for 20 pounds a night (approx $35) and the bus was very long and it was over night so we lost a lot of sleep. Again we paid only 38 pounds for the return trip (they call round trip return here). The cool part of the bus trip was getting to take the chunnel. It wasn't at all what I was expecting however, we went through customs when we got to the start of the tunnel. But after that we had to wait because you cannot drive in the chunnel, we loaded into a cargo train, on the bus, all the cars and buses are packed into this train that leaves every hour and a half, it was very interesting, it didn't even seem like we were moving. Since no one was very organized before leaving, I got the directions from the bus station to the hotel into my phone before leaving our class, what I didn't know was that the directions were completely wrong. We walked for 40 plus minutes in the wrong direction and had to find someone that spoke english to ask them how to get to our hotel. Turns out that we were in south Amsterdam and we were supposed to be in Central Amsterdam, another 40 minute walk, carrying our backpacks and everything! When we finally got to the hotel we were a bit...underwhelmed? It was advertised in the lobby as being the "worst hotel in the world" and that "you'll leave this hotel being more tired and dirty than when you came in". Upon reading these ads, I became a little frustrated and anxious to see what it was really going to be like. When we checked in we were told to come back in 2 hours so we decided to do some walking around and explore the area for a bit.

We ended up hanging out here for over an hour just enjoying the warm weather. 

We did the usual touristy things...

I like the black and white these days.. this is the other end of the pond with the I Amsterdam  sign.

This is most of the group that hang out together,  only missing Yan

This is the dining room and common room I guess for the hotel we stayed at

These are the beds and lockers we got in the room, that is Yan

The second day we went to the Anne Frank House which was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel; lucky for us the whole walk looked as good as this!

After making the walk to the museum, we discovered the line was wrapped around the building. Right next to the house was this church.

After waiting an hour in line, we finally made it into the museum, and it was well worth the wait! 

Following the museum we walked around for the rest of the day soaking in the beautiful city

If you've seen the movie Inception it will look like a scene from that, but the bridge is just one piece, kinda weird

On sunday, we went on a bike tour through the country side and they brought us to this  windmill that people still live in. From there we went to a cheese farm where they showed us how to make the cheese (I think Brit would be jealous) and also the wooden clogs, typical tourist stuff.

Towards the end of the tour we went through this park and our guide showed us this sculpture, an original Picasso.

Despite the bad bus experience and below average accommodation, the trip was an overall great success, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and would love to go back if I ever get the chance to in the future!