Amsterdam

Hey All!

I should really update this thing more, sorry about that.

So guess where I was two weekends ago?? Amsterdam!! I know exciting right, finally I have seen it! I went with it was with Michiel, Anne Noor and Jan Dirk.

Amsterdam is now the #1 city on my favourite cities list, over taking Paris, Seattle and Vancouver (and we all know how much I love Seattle). Amsterdam is absolutely beautiful, and, I found, much safer, and cleaner than Paris. It is a city know for it's -ahem- party atmosphere, don't worry I stayed out of trouble, but I found that as well as the coffee shops (which are as frequent as the Starbucks's in Seattle), you can find just about anything in Amsterdam.

In fact, the only real rare commodity in Amsterdam is space. Small roads, small houses, small stores, small restaurants, LOTS of people. The house we stayed in was 5 stories high, which doesn't sound that small, until you consider the fact that each story was one room, and the room gets crowded with any more than 2 people. In restaurants, waitresses have to shift tables and chairs to have enough room to move, and separate parties will often have to share tables.

We arrived in Amsterdam Saturday around noon, dropped our stuff at the house, and went out for lunch. With the endless amount of canals, bikes, and architecturally cool buildings, I could walk through Amsterdam forever without getting bored. After lunch we took a canal tour through the city, seeing all the great sites in Amsterdam, the St. Nicholas Church, Crazy Jack Tower, Western Church, the Harbor, Mayor's House, the Skinny Bridge and some other things.

When the canal tour was finished, we went for a walk, seeing some of the great sites of Amsterdam that you can't see from the boats. We saw the Vodka Museum (didn't get to go in:( ), the Palace in Amsterdam, the WW2 monument, and the Holy Inspiration Church/Gallery. We decided the Church might be cool to see so we went in; the artwork in there was pretty cool, what nude women and random blobs of canvas have to do with religion I'll never know, but that’s modern art for you. Also, it is of my personal belief that Amsterdam is the only place in the entire world where you would be able to buy books on Islam and Hinduism, and mini Buddha statues, in a Christian Church gift shop, love it :). Dinner on Saturday we went out for pizza at an Italian restaurant by the house. Really tasty, but the Dutch each order a full pizza for themselves (and they think the North Americans eat a lot!), I was stuffed.

Sunday we went for breakfast in a small café by the house, really really good orange juice. After that we went over to Michiel friend’s house and we chilled out for a bit and then went to the park. Did you know that Amsterdam has bright green parrots living in their park? I sure didn't. Apparently someone let their Parrots free and they took up residence in the park, quickly adapting to the cold climate, unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but it quite the sight to see, frozen lake, frost over everything, a light dusting of snow, some parrots sitting in the trees... ahah Amsterdam.

So that was my trip to Amsterdam, I hope you enjoyed reading about it almost as much as I enjoyed being there.

Last weekend, was Anne Noor's birthday and she had a birthday party Friday, then Saturday it was one of my host parents friends birthday (the people that we are going skiing with) so we went over there, they have a 19 year old au pair from Germany, so I'm not going to be totally lonely. And Sunday I went flying with Michiel to the German city of Hamm.

Next week I have off, and I'm going skiing in Italy :). Super excited. Look for that blog post sometime after the 22nd.

That’s all for Now!
Doei!

Jayden

p.s. remember! I love comments, so if you have something to say, or just to say hi, let me know your reading and post it!

P.P.S. here are the links to my pictures, make sure to check them out!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51979&id=519280565&l=16821 <- Random Photo’s
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72554&id=519280565&l=ed812 <- Random Photo's 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72590&id=519280565&l=bcecb <- Random Photo's 3
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72599&id=519280565&l=b6902 <- Random Photo's 4
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72634&id=519280565&l=47431 <- Flying
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76689&id=519280565&l=52b4b <- Amsterdam
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=76768&id=519280565&l=ea756 <- Amsterdam con't
Don’t worry if you're not on f/b, they will still work!