Waffles and Canals in Brussels and Amsterdam!

The weekend before I left for break I traveled to Brussels and Amsterdam with my roommate Alyssa, friends Ben and Phil and then Danielle met us at the Brussels airport. On the way to the Pisa airport, we almost missed our flights because the trains were not running on schedule but of course through some luck we caught our flight. Once we got to Brussels the first thing that we were in search of was a true Belgian Waffle. Once we got one it was delicious, and it was in the Elsene part of town where all the restaurants and bars are located. On the same street were about 10 different gourmet chocolate shops that all had crazy chocolate sculptures within them. More specifically it was called Galeries Saint-Hubert-Sint. We saw The Saint Michael and Saint Gudula Cathedral on Treurenberg Hill which was typical Gothic style and completely massive. It was night so it was a little bit harder to find the famous statue of the little boy peeing so that was disappointing that we did not get to see it. That night we went to this pub called Delirium that boasts that it has at all times 2004 different kinds of beer to choose from. When you walk into this gigantic 3 story pub you see on the first floor over 60 different kinds of beer on tap and this is only one floor. The menu is a 3 inch thick album of different kinds of beer which was completely overwhelming so we just tried a bunch of Belgian beers together until we finally found some that we liked.

The next morning bright and early we took a bus from Brussels to Amsterdam which took about 3 and a half hours. The arrived in the train station on the edge of town and so had a long walk to our hostel but we were not complaining. Our walk was beautiful, I had no idea Amsterdam was so pretty with all of the canals and all. I actually found out that Amsterdam has more canals than Venice. Also it has more bikes per square meter than any other city in the world. We decided not to take the trams because we wanted to see the city and went finally arrived at The BullDog Hotel which was on Oudezijds Voorburgawl haha isnt that a ridiculous street name. This hostel is world famous and there are also a bunch of BullDog cafes and bars on the same street which is right on a little river. The hostel was incredible inside the man at the front desk was fittingly Rastafarian and the restaurant in the lobby was packed with kids. Afterwards we went to go explore the area and stumbled upon the Red Light District. I was definitely not prepared for what I was about to see. In broad day light most of the windows had girls standing in them in just lingerie and highheels. I felt really uncomfortable and tried not to look, it was really sad in fact. One of the girls that I saw still had braces she was so young, it was absolutely shocking. When we came back to this area at night it was completely different and super-sized. The couple of streets really are completely lit up with tacky red lights above the transparent doors. To my surprise men were actually going into and coming out of many of the door/windows with girls in them. Also not all the girls were thin or young or good looking in the least. I guess you can say there is a prostitute in the red light district to suit everyone's taste. Along with the prostitutes were numerous sex shops, Erotic museums and even sex and pep shows that you could go into for 2 minutes for a mere 1 euro, this was all a bit disturbing to me since above many of the shops and windows were apartments with people living in them. In the Red Light District we also saw the narrowest street in all of Amsterdam and it was very very crowded.

On a happier and less disgusting note, the area of the city that I liked the most was Dam square which happened to have a carnival in it with waffles that were even better than the ones in Belgium, who knew? In Dam square is a national monument in commemoration to the victims of World War II, the Royal Palace once used by Napoleon, and Nieuwe Kerk which is a famous church built in the 15th century. We visited the Albert Cuyp market which has the famous Dutch singer Andre Hazes statue and the Flower markets as well. There is also the mulit-cultural part of town called the Pijp which was very interesting to see. Amsterdam in general is a beautiful city averaging with about 5 coffee shops per block were people can freely buy and smoke marijuana, weed, pot, grass, hash, dope, etc call it what you like. This was very crazy to me because if you looked into a coffee shop you would see all kinds of people from young tourists being obnoxiously loud and getting high to middle-aged women sitting by themselves reading a book and smoking a joint. It is a completely different way of life.

The next day we woke up early and heading over to the Heineken Factory. Here we learned how Heineken was made, were able to attend a tasting, and actually were able to mix the hops in a big barrel ourselves! You had the option of bottling your own Heineken beer and getting your name engraved on it along with a ton of other souvenirs. We saw the Heineken Clydesdale horses and a huge database of all the amazing Heineken commercials that everyone loves from the Super bowls. It really was a cool experience because it was just a brewery it was very interactive and really showed the whole process of making a little home brewed beer into an international product. After the factory we went in search of the famous I am Amsterdam sign. We asked a good number of people where the sign was and everyone kept looking at us like we were crazy or telling us that it no longer existed, however we refused to take no for an answer. Eventually we climbed onto a tram and found the letters in front of the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum which are situated right on a pond and fountain in a park. The letters were pretty and of course we took our pictures on the appropriate letters for each of our names. We also got to see the Zuiderkerk church and many other squares that were all very cute. The weather was great the entire time even though one night it did drizzle a little bit. We ate lots of fries with a weird mayonnaise sauce and waffles, in general the food in Amsterdam was nothing unique or even good.We did not make it to the Anne Frank Huis which was a bit of a disappointment but I would love to come back to this surprisingly beautiful city and then I will go.