Amsterdam!

first of all...I am writing this post sitting out on my balcony in a nice comfy chair. It was so nice out today. anyway...time to get to amsterdam. Let me start by saying Amsterdam was like a dream world. Theres no other way to describe it. Lets start with a continuation of the last post...So while getting ready for Thomas gold im getting prepared to leave straight from thomas gold to the airport with jacque and suz when i look at my ticket and realize my flight is at 10... and then i remembered that of course stupid me decided to choose the later flight than my friends were taking because it was cheaper. At the time I was freaking out a little but at the same time i was happy that i would at least get a little bit of sleep...which turned out to be worse than no sleep. Of course I thought since i was coming home id either pack when i got home or in the morning...next thing i know liz is waking me up about an hour before my flight and im freaking out thinking im not going to make my flight. I packed quickly not even knowing what I packed if anything...all i knew was i had my passport and my tickets and thats all that mattered. So i sprinted to sants estacio and thankfully there was a train in 5 minutes. I caught that train and found my way to the terminal somehow rushed through security (of course got frisked again- even after taking off my other bracelet which i assumed was the only other thing that could have been putting off the alarm) and got to my gate at 9:42 when the gate was supposed to close at 9:45. For some reason they were a little delayed and there was a whole line of people still boarding. When i got on the plane i couldnt even believe that I made it. I slept the whole flight and then arrived in Amsterdam. Since i was alone I didnt want to experiment and try to figure out the bus or metro system...it seemed a little too risky so i got a cab hoping it wouldnt be too expensive...my hopes were not right...40 euros down the drain. As i get out of the cab the cab driver said "theres a train right up the block that goes directly to the airport thats only 5 dollars you should use that next time". I was so angry and then to make things worse i walk up to my hostel and the door has a sign on it that says "closed until 2" and it was 1:15. So im sitting there thinking what am i supposed to do by myself in amsterdam for an hour so i decided to walk around and explore. Once i started to walk around I instantly fell in love with the quaint little town. The bridges everywhere and the canals and the cute little buildings and everyone riding bikes

A Mom and daughter holding hands riding bikes.. saw this everywhere. 

So after I got to the point where i was scared i was going to get lost in one direction i decided to go the other direction and passed my hostel and went down the first block i saw. While walking down this block i saw a cute little park on one of the canals and decided to just sit on a bench there and wait until 2.  While sitting there I watched videos on my camera from the night before and i looked up for a second and who was walking towards me- jacque and suz. I dont know how we possibly found each other but it was crazy. They said they had been walking around for hours trying to find the hostel and i told them i knew how to get there from here and it just happened to be two. We went to the hostel and checked in. This hostel actually  had the steepest steps in the history of steps and it was unreal trying to get up and down them

So after checking in we went to get something to eat across the street and then decided to take a nap since jacque and suz didnt sleep at all and i slept for 3 hours. We woke up with the intentions of going to the van gogh museum but couldnt figure out how to work the tram system so we kept asking directions to walk. Every person we asked said it was far every time we asked and eventually it got late so we decided to redirect ourselves to get food and check out the red light district. We went to a restaraunt called the three sisters which was amazing burgers like actually the best ive ever had in my life. Then we went to the red light district and I have never experienced a more odd experience in my life. It was not what i expected. I expected the girls to be in windows above ground level calling people up not standing within reach. When walking down the blocks we were the only girls in a sea of guys. and of course we saw boys in our program. we walked through a few streets and ended up almost mistakenly walking into a peep show and ran out of that alley quickly. We walked around a little more and then went back to our hostel and went to sleep early since we knew we were going to be up all night the next night. We woke up early, got our complimentary breakfast at the hotel and made our way to the anne frank house. 

The anne frank house was one of the coolest things ive ever done. It was insane to think that the room you were standing in was actually where anne frank hit. It was awesome to see her journal entries. and her actual room and how she decorated it because she thought it was too boring with the walls being plain. The whole experience was amazing and the best part was that when we left the line was huge so we were so happy we forced ourselves to get up early. We hopped on a boat tour. 

On the boat tour we made our way to the van gogh musem, the Iamsterdam sign and the heineken experience. I got my iamsterdam sign picture on the m!

After a struggle getting down from there we went to the van gogh museum which was really cool to see. After that we went to the heineken experience which was also awesome. It was cool to see the history of how the beer is made and there was a virtual tour part which was very cool. A lot of it was just advertising but it was in a very cool way and i enjoyed it a lot. 

After that we just walked around a little more and i got my cool amsterdam hat and new sunglasses!

Theyre kind of contradicting but whatever right? this hat is the warmest thing ever and was a lifesaver when we were still in amsterdam. After that we went back to our hostel and took a little nap and got up and got dinner right below our hostel. We got ready for energy and met up with other people from our program and made our way over there. It was a pretty long journey but it was fun because the train was full of people all going to the same place. The venue where energy was was HUGE. there were three stages but we only stayed at the one that tiesto was going to be at because we wanted to have good spots. We got to see fedde and tiesto and armin van buuren and they were all amazing. We saw hardwell in there too which made me decide that im most certainly not going to see him while hes here. After we got bored we left to go back to our hostel and get our things together and go to the airport. We made it on to our flight and safely made it back to barcelona.