i AMsterdam

Without a bike in Amsterdam, you are nothing

There are estimated to be around 600,000 regularly used bikes here, and I can totally believe that statistic! Bikes have right of way everywhere here, they are above cars, buses and especially- people. If you get in the way of a bike, too bad, you will get hurt! Being a pedestrian is being at the lowest level of the social rank.…oh well, I wouldn’t have it any other way, this city is incredible to walk around and enjoy at a super slow pace!

I got here on the 17th in the morning. Hopped on a bus to get to my hostel and made my first Dutch friend in the form of the bus driver. Well, I thought he was Dutch…turns out he’s actually Turkish living in Amsterdam (and I am discovering there is a HUGE Turkish population here!). I should have guessed this as soon as he dropped the most pathetic pickup line in history; only to be rivaled by one I had heard in Turkey itself…it went a little something like this:

Driver: “How long you in Amsterdam for?”
Me: “A couple of days”
Driver: “So little time? There are many nice attractions here for you to see! You should stay for longer!”
Me: “Oh yea? Well I’m looking forward to exploring all it’s got to offer…”
Driver: “You know what the best attraction is though?”
Me: “What’s that?”
Driver: “My house.”

Oh. Gosh.

Anyway, he was useful for one thing, pointing me in the direction of my hostel.
So that first day I wondered around, just getting lost! It wasn’t completely by choice; I had a map and was trying to follow a path I had mapped out, but it just turns out I am really bad at keeping to one and being able to read it properly! The city has so many canals that I wasn’t actually expecting! Everything here is so picturesque, the buildings are stunning! They are all so high and narrow, and many look like they were built lopsidedly! The skinny paths that make up the streets of the city are lined with bikes, EVERYWHERE. People park their bikes wherever they want and I guess there are so many around, why would someone choose yours to steal? The other noticeable thing is that although they use their bikes all the time, their bikes are actually really old and broken down looking…they are more like vintage bikes or bikes you’d find in salvos…

I managed to find my way to Anne Frank’s house in the afternoon, and what an experience that was! I have wanted to visit this house since I was around 10 and read the book and absolutely loved it. I remember when I was reading it and mum came in and told me the house was still around and she had visited it, and I had thought that I definitely wanted to visit it one day! It was different to what I thought, the rooms were quite a bit bigger than I had imagine, although, being locked up in there with other people, forced to be quite all the time and never getting to go outside… that space would soon become tiny and cramped. It was a fantastic experience to see it for myself, what her family, and others like them, were forced to do all because they were Jewish!


At breakfast the next morning I made friends with a Japanese girl who then linked us up with another Japanese guy who then got his Brazilian friend to join us. The four of us decided to explore Amsterdam together, which was a relief to me cause I really didn’t wanna just be wondering around lost the whole time cause there is too much to explore here!

My Japanese and Brazillian friends

We were on our feet for around 9 hours, but fortunately I hardly even noticed! We took a canal tour which was a great way to see the city and all its gorgeousness from the water! One of the only facts I remember from this tour was that all the skinny houses that line the canals have hooks attached to the front roofs to lift furniture through the windows cause the doors are too narrow! We ventured over to the Vincent van Gogh museum which was pretty awesome to see paintings by him and other huge artists like Claude Monet first hand.


Walking past all the coffee shops was like being at a Womadelaide or a Jack Johnson concert, the marijuana smell is so strong! It’s so bizarre that they have such tough drug laws on “strong” drugs but they are opening accepting of “soft drugs”, which still give brain damage and cause people to walk the streets stoned and looking like a bunch of idiots… no I didn’t smoke any or indulge in their weed brownies or even marijuana lollypops.

eating ollebollens!

I’m now staying in Rotterdam which is like the Melbourne of The Netherlands, very modern and busy! I am staying at a hostel that I didn’t even realise was an attraction in itself when I booked! It’s in what is called the “cube houses” which create a figurative urbane forest (yes, that is straight out of the brochure). In plain words, it’s a collection of houses that have a tilted geometric shape so it looks like the houses are all lopsided and crazy. I am still trying to work out how they manage to make the windows look like they are leaning over from the outside, but when I look out through the inside, its perfectly straight….:S

Im in the second from the right one. man how do these things work???

I am off to hopefully see The Peace Palace which is the International Court of Justice and Arbitration in The Hague. Then the next day I may go out and see some windmills and clogs and cheese and ollebollens and salty licorice and anything else Dutch that I can’t leave without missing!

Love to you all!
Lauren xoxox