I recently went to Amsterdam for a few days with my boyfriend. It was my first time in the Netherlands and I’d really been wanting to visit the Dutch capital for quite some time. It was such a beautiful city with all the canals, the cute and crooked buildings, great atmosphere, very friendly people, and superb food (vlaamse frites and pannekoekenhuis wherever we went, need I say more?). Not too big of a city either, so it was easy to get around by foot (even though a lot of the blocks looked very similar to each other, resulting in me struggling to get my bearings and therefore kept thinking “oh yeah, we’ve definitely been to this spot already” when in fact we hadn’t…). My sense of direction isn’t great at the best of times, so I’m lucky to have a boyfriend who pretty much is a human compass…!
It’s pretty crazy how many cyclists there are in Amsterdam, you could literally see dozens of bikes parked wherever you turned. If/when I go there again, I’m definitely renting one. Although if you didn’t pay enough attention where you were walking (something I’m guilty of from time to time), there was a pretty high risk of being hit by a cyclist whizzing by!
It did feel a bit surreal, with the coffee shops and the Red Light District and all… How certain things that are illegal everywhere else are totally acceptable. Maybe the Dutch are simply one step ahead of the rest of the world with such liberalism?
Anyway, here are some snaps from the trip.
