This weekend I went to Amsterdam with Nastya, Anton, and Ryan. We rented a car; it took 3 hrs to get there. I found an awesome place on AirBnB just East of Oldtown in IJburg (Eye-burg). IJburg is a relatively new island/suburb/community (built in 2013); it is one of the many man-made islands the Dutch have created in Amsterdam and throughout the world (UAE Palm Islands were made by Dutch). After meeting our host we went to the city.
My camera didn't work well this weekend and I was left with a lot of dark and blurry shots. In Amsterdam we walked around for a couple of hours in order to get lunch and a feel for the city.
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| It is all very pretty. |
My picture of the Dam Square, the original dam that led to present day Amsterdam didn't turn out. Nor did the picture of the Royal Dutch Palace. But, I did get the picture below, which shows the interesting brick architecture one can find within the city:
After walking around, we decided to rent bikes in order to see even more of the city. This is Ryan's "excited to be photographed at bike shop" pose:
Bike riding in Amsterdam is quite the thrill. Between the trams, cars, and hordes of people, I almost wrecked 5 or six times. Our group got split up a few times more than that number, and we stopped to consult a map almost every 4 blocks. Despite wrong turns and miss-adventures, it was very fun. I made a quick visual representation of our trip as I remember it:
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| If you click it may get bigger? |
I included little black stars of some of the photo spots for pictures from this post and the next, as well as where we ate breakfast (next post). Below are pictures from the day:
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| Rijksmusuem w/ bike path through the middle. |
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| The big park. Incredible landscape architecture. Maybe that will come across later. |
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| Riding partners |
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| Someone lucked out and has a house in the park. |
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| Soccer and Dutch woman who isn't going as fast as it looks. |
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| Add caption. |
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| Wetlands within the park. |
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| Still in the Park. |
It seemed like everybody in Amsterdam rides a bikes. The locals were quite non-nonchalant and acted as if it wasn't incredibly hectic and dangerous. How can I assume this? Well, for one, couples would ride through the park and the streets while holding hands. Ryan and Anton gave it a try:
1 millisecond later and we could all see the crash that resulted from the amateur hand hold attempt.
After riding around the town, we asked where a cool place to get a drink would be. The bike rental clerk drew us a nice map out and we went there. This was about the same time the sky went overcast and it began to rain. This is on the way to the place:
This is the place. I had a great Belgian beer and then we continued exploring. Picture:
We walked through tons of squares that looked like this on the way back to the oldtown:
After we found and ate some Pizza, we sat on a canal and hung out. Anton and I like to play a game where we pick hard words in our mother-tongue and teach them to each other / laugh at how we can't pronounce them. We also went over basic phrases, slang, and idioms. For example, I got in a situation where I had to explain disingenuous, and it led to other fun language topics (my train of thought, maybe you could of done better: sincere-> genuine-> sarcastic -> patronizing -> disingenuous).
Anton is 100% fluent for all intensive purposes and Nastya is pretty advanced. However, she has a hard time understanding an American or English accent. So, whenever she doesn't hear or understand something, we ask Anthon to say it in Russian. But, all he really needs to do is say it in English with his Russian/Ukrainan accent and then Nastya understands perfectly fine. Jokingly, this revelation led to Ryan and I speaking in deep "Russian" accents when explaining word and phrases.
On the canal.
We ended up going to an Irish pub for some time before heading home on the tram. It was a long but great day.
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