Amsterdam

DSC06002 We kicked off March by taking a weekend trip to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.  I didn’t really do a ton of research before we got there, but it was probably one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to.  It was a nice break from all of the ancient architecture in most of the other cities I have visited earlier in Europe.  Overall Amsterdam just seemed extremely well planned and modern which was pretty awesome to see.  It seems like most cities DSC05987I’ve been to try implementing things like bike lanes, but it is usually pretty sporadic.  In
Amsterdam bikes definitely have priority over the streets.  Every street has designated bike lanes (which we learned quickly not to walk in).  The other thing that they did to really show that bikes have the right of way is by making sidewalks continuous over streets.  That meant that on most of the side streets there was basically a large speed hump for cars at the intersection. Now onto more specifics about our trip…..

Day 1DSC05984

When we landed it was a pretty rainy/snowy and overall a gloomy day so we made our way to our Airbnb and got settled in.  Because it wasn’t really that nice of a day we worked on planning out the our next two days.

Day 2

We decided to just walk around all day Saturday and just take in all the modern architecture that is everywhere in Amsterdam.  After walking around for awhile, we all noticed how quite Amsterdam was, probably due to how few cars there are even in the city center.

Day 3DSC06087

On our last full day in Amsterdam we decided to go to the Van Gogh Museum (which was next to the MOMA housed in am huge bathtub building) and to go to the Heineken brewery for the “Heineken Experience.”  The Heineken Brewery looked like it had been pretty newly renovated and definitely much more than just  a brewery tour which was made it pretty interesting.  Finally also as part of the Heineken Experience, we got a free canal ride back to the city center since, if you didn’t take a canal ride, did you really visit Amsterdam?DSC06146DSC06129

Until next time Amsterdam!