Amsterdam!

          For my first weekend of travel, I didn't want to venture too far away from Amsterdam, and most people seemed to feel the same way. Plus, there are so many cool places close to Maastricht! I left early Friday morning to go with a group of girls to Amsterdam for the day- it's about a 2.5-hour train ride. We were all so tired that we slept on the way. It was drizzling and FREEZING once we got to Amsterdam- I can't believe it is like this already in August, it makes me scared about being here in November. I am, like most Louisiana/Houston natives, a huge baby about cold weather. But, Amsterdam was beautiful despite the gloomy skies. We had an encounter with this pigeon whisperer/ Dutch Dumbledore wannabe, ate lunch, and then wandered around the canals- I love the water and the style of architecture!

Pigeon Wizard- I think he is casting a spell on the poor things.

One of many canals!

Cute canal houses

          We walked through a flower market then waited to get into the Anne Frank house. It took about an hour, but was so worth it if you put it into this perspective- we wait an hour for roller coasters all the time, and this wait was to get a perspective of how this brave, now world-famous girl actually lived during those awful years. I read her diary a long time ago and don't remember many details, but the hiding place was a lot larger than I had imagined- multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen/living room, all hidden behind a bookcase. I got chills when I saw that the posters and news clipping she glued to the walls of her bedroom were still there.

With Anne Frank's statue outside her house

          After the Anne Frank house, we just wandered around some for the rest of the afternoon and saw pretty churches, a mall that could easily be mistaken for a palace, and just a tiny bit of the red light district which is both fascinating and disheartening.

Can you believe this is the local mall?!

Inside of the mall... America needs to try harder.

          We headed back to the train station, stopping for some yummy pizza on the way. One thing I knew about Amsterdam but still wasn’t prepared for: there is marijuana EVERYWHERE! You can smell it from the street and it reeks so badly! I find it funny that they call the places where you are allowed to buy and smoke it “coffee shops” even though I doubt they actually sell much coffee. So, if you are in Amsterdam and want a latte, go to a “café”, not a “coffee shop”! :) After some minor train confusion, we made it back to Maastricht.

          On Saturday, we went back to Amsterdam (we just didn’t want to spend the night there). It was gloomy and chilly again, but I was better prepared for it. We had lunch and went to the Rijksmuseum, which was really cool.

Rijksmuseum- they are doing construction/remodeling on part of it.

          My favorite thing was seeing Dutch paintings of Amsterdam from the 1600’s, and realizing that the houses along the canals in the painting have hardly changed since then. Next was the Van Gogh museum- very cool! Starry Night was not there but we saw several others of his famous paintings, and even a few Monets and Cezannes, which made me happy because although I don’t know much about art, I do love the French impressionists. We wandered around some more and though it may not seem like we did much, we were exhausted, so we headed back and got into Maastricht just in time to see the sun setting.

Wonderful day, wonderful sunset.