Amsterdam

Going to Amsterdam was an experience in itself. This was my first time to fly out of one of London’s airports. Our flight left London at 8:30 AM, so we decided to leave our hotel a little after 5:00 AM. We wanted to leave extra early because we had just heard about our friends missing their check-in time at the airport by only 4 minutes the night before.
We had already looked at which train we needed to get to London City Airport and knew how much it would cost us but we did forget one minor detail…. The tube stations don’t open until 5:30am! So we stood around the station for a little while waiting for the station to open. We took the first train of the morning and made it there with plenty of time to spare!
We flew through KLM airlines. On the plane they served us a sandwich along with drinks, it was much nicer than US airlines. When we were arriving in Amsterdam, we were a little nervous about having to speak Dutch where ever we went, but after walking around the airport for a few minutes we realized that everything was in English! Central Station where the trains come in

We checked into our hostel as soon as we got there and then went sight seeing. Friday and Saturday was filled with museums, canal tours, and taking pictures with a lot of getting lost in between.
On Friday, after searching for an affordable place to eat we found a good little Itialian restaurant for dinner. The cost of eating in Amsterdam was more that I inticipated... we had a hard time finding a place to sit and eat at for under 10 euros just for the main dish! And we soon realized that almost every restaurant there had some kind of cat that would walk around the place while people were eating dinner! (gross! but no one else seemed to mind)
Our Italian Dinner, they put us right next to the oven... it was so warm :)

We were able to go to the Anne Frank House, the Van Gough Museum, the FOAM photography museum, a couple markets, a tour through the canals, a lot of tulips and even a windmill!

Walking through the Anne Frank house was amazing! Everything in the museum was in Dutch and English, so thankfully I was still able to understand everything. I remember reading part of Anne Frank's Diary but not much of it. It was so sad that out of the 8 people hiding in these tiny rooms for two years that someone would rat the out. And that out of the 8, only 1 survived the concetration camps (Otto, Anne's father).
The Anne Frank House
After walking through Amsterdam, it looks like the city is stuck in time… all the buildings are beautiful but old. One thing that I realized about Amsterdam is that they have some many different kinds of transportation around the city. It was complete chaos when trying to cross the roads with out getting hit by something! They have trams, trains, cars, boats, motorcycles, vespas, and bicycles just to name a few. But mainly, there were bicycles chained up everywhere aroundthe city.

Saturday night, Britanny and I met one of the others staying in our room. His name was Michael and he was a Chinese student studying in the UK that was visiting Amsterdam on his own for the weekend. Talking to him made me realize how lucky I am to be a native English speaker and to be an American. I am also learning how hard it is for non-Americans to live and even visit the US. I read that soon the US is going to require people to apply for permission to even enter into the US. I know that there are safety reasons for this, but sometimes it seems like the US may be going a little over board... anyways
I am so glad that I had the opportunity to go to Amsterdam, it was a neat city but I think it will be a while before I want to go back. I loved learning about the city's history and about Hitler's invasion of Holland, but there are too many other legalized things her that aren't really my style if you know what I mean.
When I got back to London, I found that my computer is not working properly. This means that it will take a bit longer to upload photos here. But I will get them up ASAP!