Did You Get Lost in Amsterdam?

If you like riding bikes, you should move to Amsterdam. They are BY FAR the most popular form of transportation. They have parking garages solely for bikes, bikes parked all along the canals, and tons and tons of bikers who have no intention of stopping if you walk in front of them (I learned this the hard way by nearly getting hit by one). We were also informed by a tour guide that while cleaning out the canals (which are quite numerous) it is completely normal to find a bazillion bikes on the bottom that either crashed, fell in, or were no longer wanted. For those of us who don't like riding bikes, cars are still widely available. A word of caution though: they pull out a car from the canals roughly once a week. If you're bad at parallel parking, I would recommend not driving, because there are NO RAILINGS (or really small ones) lining the canals... and those are also the primary parking spots.

Of course there is a bunch more to Amsterdam than just bikes--it wasn't until I went that I realized how influential Dutch people are. On our trip we visited the Van Gogh Museum, the house where Anne Frank hid during the holocaust, and went to another museum with paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer (think Girl With the Pearl Earring). On our way to Amsterdam we even visited the town where Girl with the Pearl Earring takes place and where William of Orange was buried. Fun Fact: Orange is actually in France. However, as most royalty in Europe was somehow related, he inherited the Prince of Orange title when his cousin who held the title died. Conveniently, he also inherited a ton of land in the low countries (aka Belgium and the Netherlands) and was a huge instigator in leading the Dutch revolt against Spanish that started the 80 years war. He was a trouble maker. He is also not to be confused with the William of Orange associated with the Glorious Revolution in England. that was later. (It took me awhile to realize this haha).

Returning from the history lesson- Amsterdam is really not too big. Our hostel was very central, meaning we could basically walk anywhere. And because we visited with our class, our teacher wasted no time in seeing as many places as possible. Meaning we walked A LOT! All day for three days. I suppose we could have ridden bikes, but the weather was actually very cold during our stay, so I question how fun riding a bike would be. Still, visiting Amsterdam was an overall great experience. It helped that everyone spoke English much better than in Belgium (I guess with Dutch as the only other language, it's sort of important to speak a more universal language too)

My answer to the question in the title of this post? No. I did not get lost in Amsterdam. But I did feel like I should quote part of that Guster song just because it's about Amsterdam!!!

Doei! (That's goodbye in Dutch)