The last and final stop for our Europe trip was 5 days in Amsterdam. After a crazy long bus journey from Germany we arrived in the late afternoon at A random train station and headed into town to find Callums friends house- Mark and Julia a couple who he’d met in Asia a few years ago and who we’d spend the next 2 nights with. Once we arrived we weren’t awake for long and we all ended up going to bed fairly soon. The next morning we went and hired a bike and spent a lovely sunny day all cycling around Amsterdam city stopping at all the major landmarks. It was pretty cool to be able to ride everywhere and for it be so easy to on all the roads. The only scary part was when the low powered cars and scorers drove past you in the bike lanes. So not only do you have a hundred other people but a few scooters zooming by.
In the centre we stopped off for some of Amsterdam’s best herring fish with some really yummy sauce it is apparently a Dutch tradition. We then headed back home cycling through Vondel park and what felt even busier than the roads. It was about lunch time so we snacked away before heading out again for a ride to a forest area and to the airport where Mark worked. It was a pretty cool cycle ride however I was feeling pretty shattered and had a sore bottom from the seat and also from falling down some stairs earlier in the day.
That evening I had planned to meet up with one of my house mates from Sydney – Tessa and Jan who had come from the Hague to see me. We headed off for some Dutch-Surinamese food to a place I think called Waterkant. Suriname is a Dutch colony and apparently there is a fair bit of their culture mixed in with the Dutch. The food was delicious and I would highly recommend it. After dinner we wandered around the canals and stopped off for some tea/coffee. It was great to be able to catch up after so long.
On Sunday we were checking into a hostel, where we somehow managed to get ridiculously lost walking away from the place for about half an hour. we finally arrived and ended up crashing into our room and spending the afternoon watching a movie on my phone after being able to get some good wifi. After a few movies we headed into China town to find some Asian cuisine and wander around. By Tuesday we decided we needed to go do some more sight seeing so we headed down to the Anne Frank museum. After waiting in line for almost two hours we made it in and were so glad we took the time to visit it. As many would have heard of the Diary of Anne Frank ,or even read it. So if your still lost I have some some quick facts to keep you up to speed. Anne was a Jewish girl whose family hid with another family for two years above her fathers factory in an annex during WW2 in the hope of surviving their persecution. Sadly in late 1943 they were betrayed by someone who today they are still not sure who it was and were arrested and taken to various concentrations camp. Unfortunately all of them died in particular Anne who passed away within months of the camp she was in being liberated. Her father was the only one to have survived. He preserved and published her diaries a few years after the war and allowed their house to made into a museum so as to preserve the memory of not only Anne but his family. It was very surreal to be in the very place she had described so often in her diary entries- from the rooms they shared to the way their lives were lived in fear. With little remnants of furniture and the like in the house (when they were arrested the Nazi’s took everything and Anne’s father wanted the rooms to be left empty to symbolize them being taken.) it made it eerily profound to be there, sad but also a very incredible experience. It would be one thing not to miss when in Amsterdam if you have the time. After the museum I had googled earlier a cafe called Pancakes Amsterdam which made gluten free pancakes..(excitement) So we were headed there for lunch. The pancakes did not disappoint with different flavours such as raspberry with camambet cheese they were a pretty good highlight for meals on our trip.
Full to the brim on pancakes we decided to go out and walk around the canals and see the night life of Amsterdam as our last night it was definitely interesting to see all the various things that Amsterdam had. The next morning we had booked on a BA flight to London in the morning, with a short journey to the airport and a super short flight to London, it felt like BA was first class compared to many of the other airlines we often take when traveling on a budget so it was a nice way to end the trip. It’s funny that’s it’s the small things like that, which you appreciate when your on budget!
So whoever said you can’t do Europe on £1300 each for food and most accomindation/spending money, we managed to do
•1 continent
•7 weeks of travel
•7 countries
•Countless trains, buses, Airbnb’s, cathedrals and cities
•1 Vespa through Tuscany and 1 scooter in Croatia.
•A tomato festival, wine festival and Oktoberfest
•One sail trip.
•4 flights and…
•Countless awesome people met along the way. Our European adventure is finally finished and I can’t wait to go back to do even more next time.
hatches and rambles 