Holland

So, we decided to take a weekend trip to Amsterdam. The problem with traveling to a city for only a weekend is that you either don't have time to do everything that you want to do, or you're rushing to cram everything in. We weren't exactly rushing, but I'm so exhausted because of how much we managed to do this weekend. Friday, we left our residence around 4AM, to catch a 6:30 flight. The weather in Holland was pretty much gloomy and cold all around. Over the course of the weekend, I went to six museums, went on a boat tour of the canals, rode bikes in the rain, among other things that I'm probably forgetting. Our first museum stop was the Anne Frank house, which is somewhere that I've wanted to visit since I was 12 years old, and reading books like Number the Stars and Anne Frank's diary. I'm really glad that we went. The museum was just set up so well, between the quotes from her diary, the pictures, and the videos of people who were close to her. To lighten the mood, we got bagels after the museum, and then we went to the Van Gogh museum, which I enjoyed a lot more than I was expecting to, even though we were all sleep deprived. On saturday, I saw the Jewish museum which had this really cool exhibit (I took some pictures of it, ill up them later) on this one artist whose name I don't remember. Then we putzed around a flea market and went to the Rembrant house, and then to a photography museum. Yesterday, I went on boat tour of the canals, and even though it was rainy and foggy, it was really pretty. Then, the rijtmuseum, which is hyped up a lot, but I didn't find it to be that exciting, and then we all went for a bike ride. Amsterdam is such an amazing bike city. It was nice to hear people speaking english again. I was also really excited that there was a grocery store right across the street from our hostel. Even more exciting, it was a grocery store that we have in Philly, but literally everything in this store was different. [I really like going to different grocery stores and seeing what products they sell/who they cater to/how their prices are.] Almost everything cost approximately one euro. They sold giant jars of peanut butter for one euro, which wouldn't be exciting, but in Italy they don't really have peanut butter, and in my local grocery store in Rome, a smallish jar of peanut butter costs over 5 euro (which is approx $7). And, I've been eating a lot of peaunit butter here, to get in my proteins...so one euro peanut butter was exciting to me.