The Final Eurotrip: Amsterdam and Brussels

To celebrate the end of my first final and to put off studying for my last two finals, last week I took my last European vacation, or holiday, to Amsterdam and Brussels with two friends. I was nervous that we wouldn't be able to leave Edinburgh as the weather is still all over the place and many of my friends' trips have been cancelled, but luckily we got out and made it to Amsterdam in the early evening on Tuesday.

After finding the train into the city and walking down a few really sketchy alleys in search of our hostel, we finally found what we were looking for: The Flying Pig. The name says it all. It was by far the strangest hostel I've ever seen. After checking in, Emily and I soon realized that rather than give us two twin beds, we would be sleeping in the same, slightly larger than a twin, bed in a 32-bed room. It was definitely an interesting start to the trip.

The next day, we walked through the city to the Van Gogh museum. The walk was longer than we had expected, but it was definitely worth it. The city and its canals are gorgeous, and we passed a lot of neat buildings, as well as the famous flower market. After spending a few hours at the museum, we made our way to the Heineken experience.  As I've seen quite a few breweries and distilleries on this trip and am interested in the beer making process, this was my favorite part of the entire trip. The two free beers at the end didn't hurt either. After exploring the Heineken building for a while, we walked through one of the biggest outdoor markets in Europe and then went to the Anne Frank house. Being in the Anne Frank house was so weird, as I've read the diary so many times for school and now had the opportunity to see everything first hand, including her original diary. It was definitely quite moving. After walking around all day and then a nice dinner, followed by "the best fries in Holland" we did a bunch of tourist shopping and called it a night.

On Thursday morning, we decided to take a canal tour. This was also one of my favorite parts of the trip. They told us lots of cool facts about Amsterdam, such as houses used to be taxed on width which is why they're so tall and skinny, when people move everything is moved through the windows, and an average of 3 cars drive into the canals each week. After the canal cruise and a bit more walking around and exploring, Emily and I got on a bus bound for Brussels.

There wasn't a ton that we wanted to see in Brussels, but we did want to eat Belgian waffles and chocolate, and drink Belgian beer. This wasn't an issue as waffle stands were everywhere, along with chocolate shops. We learned quickly that if we went into a chocolate store we would immediately be offered a free sample, and we used this to our advantage. Brussels was really easy to walk around so we managed to see all of the major sites in one day, including the Grande Place, the Palace of Justice, the real palace, a statue that is supposed to be good luck if you rub it, as well as the Manneken Pis statue, which was so much smaller than I had expected. We also tried a few different kinds of Belgian beer, and it was delicious! My favorite was an apple beer. 

Now that my European traveling adventures are over, it's time to start packing for home. Four days until I'm stateside again!