First stop eurotrip: Amsterdam

31/12/09

This morning we departed from Amsterdam from Paris. Two days in Amsterdam so many things happened. The main problem or us foreigner is the language. Its well known that European are very proud of their language, so its a bit hard for us tourist to ask for their help. Luckily the famous tourist places, the people can speak and the shopkeeper can speak English, so it wasn't that hard or us. The other things is that there's quite a population of Indonesian here, so they are some shopkeeper that can speak a bit of Indonesian/Malay.

The places in Amsterdam are very beautiful. But I think it'll be prettier in Spring when the tulips are in season. The second day we were here, it started to snow. This is our second experience with snow since we did encounter it in UK. The afternoon we arrived in Amsterdam, we only walked around the city center since everything closes by 4pm. Did we went to the red light district? The answer was no. None of us was interested in the red light district. hehe.

Amsterdam

A market in the city

Amsterdam at night

The next day, we woke up a bit late. So we had breakfast and head to Ann Frank's house. When we saw the queue, it was very very long. We decided not to waste time here and head to Van Gogh Museum. Well, the queue at Van Gogh Museum was not any better. So we decided to just go with it and queue for half an hour to get our tickets. Entrance to this museum costs 12.50 euro. This museum is dedicated to Van Gogh's art work as well as some stories on his personal life. After that we went to search for the big I AMSTERDAM sign, but we couldn't find it. Then, we head to Ann Frank's House. The queue definitely didn't get any shorter. So we just queue with the rest. Ann Frank is a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms at the rear of the building during wartime. This museum showed us how the location that they hid and how it protected the people from the Nazi. But eventually they were betrayed by someone and caught by the Nazi.

Van Gogh Museum

A cute car in Amsterdam

WARNING!!

Ann Frank's House

Another night in Amsterdam

The next day we took a tour to Volendam and Marken. Volendam is a popular tourist attraction in the Netherlands, well known for its old fishing boats and the traditional clothing still worn by some residents. The women's costume of Volendam, with its high, pointed bonnet, is one of the most recognizable of the Dutch traditional costumes, and is often featured on tourist postcards and posters. However, we went there to visit cheese factory and wooden shoes factory where we learn how cheese and wooden shoes are made respectively. We also saw windmill here which is a significant trademark of Holland though we didn't went into one. Marken is famous for its characteristic wooden houses.

In the tour bus

Cheese Factory

Volendam

wooden shoes in the snow

Wooden shoes ready to be painted according to your desired design

The process of making a pair of wooden shoes

Wooden houses of Marken

Marken

Ducks on a frozen pond

One thing we noticed here is that the souvenir is a bit pricy here. For example, a shirt in London cost GBP x or x+1. That is for shirt on sale, if not on sale about GBP 2x. Here, the cheapest shirt in the city costs 4x euro. So expensive. There's one shirt that I really want but the price is so unreasonable. Luckily when I went to Volendam, it was a bit cheaper compared to Amsterdam, so I bought it right away. The fridge magnets here is half the price of the same item at Amsterdam. So we bought all of our souvenir here in Volendam. Why pay more when you can get the same item at a cheaper price right?

Overall, Amsterdam is a really nice place. But word of advice, if you plan to go into the museums, I really suggest for you to buy the tickets online to save time queuing for the entrance tickets. Transport here, you can buy their 24/48/72 hours transport pass depending on how long you are planning to stay in Amsterdam. This pass allows unlimited access to all types of public transport for the amount of time that you purchased. The 48 hours pass that we bought costs 11.50 euro. We went on a bus on the last day from our hotel to central station which is about 10mins tram ride costs 3.50 euro. So expensive. So please take my advice on transportation.

That's all from Holland, will update about Paris soon.
Till then~