My First Day in Amsterdam
“Welcome to Amsterdam” is what I heard over the airplane intercom as I woke up. Okay, now that I’ve had an hour of sleep I feel confident enough to take on one of the biggest party cities in the world. The airport was pretty easy to get through, although, The Netherlands is now officially the 2nd country I’ve been to where I didn’t need to pass through customs or immigration. It was a little odd, but I’m not complaining.
Once I figured out the whole train system things started to make a lot more sense. Okay, so I just need to take the train to Amsterdam Centraal (actually the way it’s spelled) and from there I can take tram 24 to tram 9 which should run into tram 26 which looks like it will take me kinda near my hostel. I had 0% faith in myself. That seemed reasonable since I couldn’t even pronounce the address of my hostel.
An hour trip which should have only taken 15 minutes later I got dumped off the bus on Zeeburgenstraat. There were some other backpackers that got off too, but naturally we all walked in different directions. After walking in about a 3 block circle I ran into the other backpackers who were also walking in a giant circle. It turns out that we were all going to the same place but clearly none of us knew how to get there. At least I was meeting people.
We asked about 8 people for directions. I think one old lady thought we were going to mug her cause she just started walking faster and looked down when we said anything to her. Luckily there were enough of us to trap her. She had no idea what we were talking about. This other lady cringed when she saw my arm. It was kinda exciting to know that it even makes folks in Amsterdam think twice. We ended up getting enough bits and pieces of directions to find our hostel.
This place is pretty much a hotel including an attached bar and restaurant. It’s gorgeous! Sometimes it’s hard to believe what you can get for $30 a night. I checked in but I couldn’t actually go up to my room until 2. That’s okay, remember I napped for an hour on the airplane! I joined up with two more people and we set out to scratch the surface of Amsterdam.
We met a ton of interesting people and saw some pretty cool places that we would need to come back and check out. One thing that continued to amaze me was how many people ride their bikes, everywhere! They actually have parking garages for bikes like they do for cars in America. It was kinda neat to see. So when you’re crossing the street you actually have 4 lanes to get across. One each way for cars and another each way for bikes. Normally we think of a bike lane as a little white line on the edge of a road that you’re not supposed to drive in but it’s a bit more than that over here. It’s an entirely new lane that even has its own set of traffic lights! If you need to use the toilet and you’re not at home I hope you brought some money. It seemed that the average price was 50 cents but if you shop around you could find some bathrooms as low as 35 cents. Come to think of it, public toilets were the same way in Paris. I guess nobody ever uses em there though.
I walked around town for a few hours and headed back to my hostel to take a nap. As soon as my head hit my pillow I was out. Around 8 hours later I woke up and rinsed off. I never thought a shower could feel so nice. The only weird part was how to actually work the shower. You when you go to a public restroom and need to push the button on the faucet to turn it on? Ya, well that’s how this shower works. It’s not too bad until you’ve got soap in your eyes and your feeling all over the wall for the stupid button.
I ventured out again and found a great little pub. After a few beers there I knew I should head out for some food. I managed to find a little hot dog cart along the way and that sure hit the spot. I debated if I wanted to go find another cafe and see how hard the pot is here, but I figured I would leave that for tomorrow. I headed back to my hostel for another complete night of sleep.
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