AmsterDAMN!

        What I feel about Paris…I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to this city of canals.

        When we left Paris, we boarded a train for a four hour ride East to get to what we thought would be an exciting part of our journey. Until then, every country we had traveled to was incredible in their own rights. We had heard so many great things about Amsterdam; how fun it was, how unique it was, how we wouldn’t want to leave once we got there. From personal experience, I didn’t find these claims to be entirely true.

        Now, don’t get me wrong, the city wasn’t completely dreadful. We arrived to our hostel and it was filled with young kids playing pool, listening to music and having drinks at the downstairs bar. Our room was right in the middle of downtown and there was so much to do. Similar to Paris, there were clothing shops and eateries everywhere you turned. The city of loaded with canals which are indeed pretty and make the scenery unique but the brown water which fills them makes the appeal dwindle a bit. Another distinctive aspect about Amsterdam is that everyone rides bicycles as their main source of transportation. The city does have trains which are incredibly competent, but the number of bikes crowding the city are by far the most I have seen anywhere else.

        We had a pretty enjoyable time our first day there. We wandered around taking in the scenery and stopped at some local joints (no pun intended) to see what could entertain us. It was a good time. I did start to notice what would soon irritate me about the people in this city. When we were in a local pub, the bartenders there were downright rude. I brushed it off my shoulder as I thought they may be having a bad day. It wasn’t until the next daylight that I realized it was a common response for locals to lash out on American tourists. The next day I had three more people snap at me for no apparent reason, including one bus driver who refused to make change for my fifty euro bill because he “didn’t have time for that”. Then he proceeded to tell me to get off his bus.

        It was at about this point when I was over it. Besides the Anne Frank museum, there weren’t many attractions to see and the city itself wasn’t exceptionally glamorous. Oh, and the food, it was utterly despicable. We sat down at a pizza place and I ordered a side salad and a margarita pizza and Ryan a Napolitano pizza. When my salad was presented to me, I looked at it with shock as it consisted of chopped iceburg lettuce with one olive on the top with no dressing! Our pizzas we horrible. Mine looking like a plain cheese pizza and Ryan’s appearing the same except his had two sardines placed on top of the cheese. I refused to pay for my plate of lettuce which I didn’t touch and we ended up dishing out twenty euros for by far the worst meal we had ever attempted to eat.

        Not to be a gripe about Amsterdam, it was an occurrence we are glad we had fulfilled, it just did not live up to our expectations and compared to other cities we have seen thus far, it was certainly on the bottom of the list. I longed for days that would soon come in Italy so that the sun could hit my skin instead of the cold, dreary rain. In the end, it was what it was. We saw, we experienced, we learned, we never regret.