Sunday, March 1, 2015

A Place Beyond Belief

These past few weeks have flown by and have been pretty busy. I have deadlines fast approaching and have done a little traveling. At this point I am adjusted to living here and loving it. Leaving here to return home will definitely be an emotional experience. Last weekend I took a train up to Sheffield to visit Sarah. It is nice sometimes to be around familiar people, it makes me feel like I am at home. We just hung out the first day, went out for dinner and drinks, and then Saturday we met up with Megan and ate lunch. After lunch we got to watch her swim, it was pretty sweet, the pool was much bigger than any I have been to at home.


After returning form Sarah's I had a very easy week, since it was reading week for my course I had the whole week off of class. Wednesday night I left for Amsterdam with Deanna, Sam, Haley, and Emily. We took a 12 hour bus journey all the way there. The way there was not as bad as the way home. Along with the bus ride there was a ferry ride to get across the channel, this was a surprise and was pretty cool. Once we finally arrived in Amsterdam it was 9 am and we were all tired and crabby, but we still had to find our houseboat. We took a train to central station and then another ferry to get to the location of our house. It was cold and rainy through this entire process, but finally we made it there. Right away all we wanted to do was sleep, and the weather wasn't helping us, but we all got ready and headed back into central. Once there we just did a little wandering around and then got dinner and headed home to rest up for the next day.

The Ferry we took to get to central Amsterdam
The pier the house was on

Outside the house

The pier sign


The inside of the house
The next day was the busiest one, we had a lot of things we wanted to do, but limited time. We headed back into central and decided we needed to try the pancakes that we could always smell. They were delicious. Next we got on the tram that took us to the Van Gogh museum, we spent a few hours here and then decided we needed to spend the rest of the day outside because it was so nice. 
Outside the Museum

The next place to visit was the iamsterdam sign. It was so crowded so getting a good picture was pretty much impossible, there was also a ice skating rink there, that we later went back to skate at. It was so cool skating in Amsterdam with everything lit up. It made me really appreciate all of the support I have from everyone and how lucky I am to be here. After skating we all got chinese food and went back home.



The rink we skated on


The next day would be the last one and the only things we had on our list was the Anne Frank house and to find the bench from the fault in our stars. We accomplished them both. After an hour and a half long wait to enter the house, I was about to experience something I have always thought about. After learning so much about Anne Frank and her life in hiding I was ready to actually see what it was like. Experiencing the annex in person does not compare to just learning about it. For me actually seeing it all, it put it all into perspective to how hard her life was. It amazes me the amount of hope she had to get out of there. After this amazing experience we started to search for the bench. 

Waiting to enter

The house in colour is the Anne Frank house

One of these benches has to be the right one!

Unfortunately we had to start our journey back to school, which little did we know would take much longer that expected. The ferry we had to take back across the channel was two hours later than the bus company thought so instead of arriving in London at 5:45 am we arrived around 7:30. It was a long exhausting night of travel and as happy as I am to be back home, I wish I would have had more time in Amsterdam. This week I have three deadlines and then a day trip to Stonehenge and Bath on Saturday!!

There were surprisingly a lot of cheese stores in Amsterdam

The group on one of the many canals

The city is made up of so may beautiful canals!!





1 comment:

  1. So so so so so so so awesome, Tor. I'm glad that you are really taking advantage of the opportunity that you have. One thing though-you had Chinese food...in Amsterdam..?

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