Hey everyone! I, the (20M) study abroad student, am here with a trip report for Amsterdam. Before doing research into Europe, I’ll admit that everything that I knew about Amsterdam came from the YA book “Fault in Our Stars,” but since it seemed like an iconic European capital city and was an easy Eurostar ride away from London, I thought it’d be a worthwhile trip. Like Lisbon, I encountered transportation troubles (hence 4.5 days instead of 3 days), but I’ll detail them below. And as always, mile counts are listed below, with a notable milestone broken for me.
Day 1: Amsterdam
In the morning, I went to the Anne Frank Museum. I’ll say that I was a bit surprised by the exterior, which was more modern that I had expected, and the interiors, which were very, very sparse. Most of them were quite empty outside of words written on walls, the occasional display, and a handful of captioned photos of the Frank family and other WW2 events. I do have mixed emotions about this. In some ways, it removes the frills and other distractions that could detract from the tragedy of the Holocaust, allowing for the raw emotions to speak for themselves (there were some people who were crying in the museum). On the other hand, the museum can feel a bit sterile, impersonal, and frankly, not memorable. It’s pretty apparent that I fall into the latter camp. Even though the minimal decor was Otto Frank’s wish, which I understand, it strips a lot of warmth and intimacy that is signature to diary-esque writing, leaving a bit of a disconnect between the book and museum in my opinion. From there, I headed to the Van Gogh Museum, which is this modern installation close by to the Rijkmuseum. I’ll admit that I had one of the worst museum fatigue episodes ever there due to poor sleep from the first night in the hostel, and I’m pretty sure that I accidentally took a short nap while sitting on a bench and leaning on the wall. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the museum without the Pokémon-Van Gogh crossword that kept my mind a bit alert and allowed me to better focus on, at least, the highlights of the museum, like the dark and almost grotesque Potatoeaters or the sunnier Sunflowers and wheat fields of rural Europe or the weirdly colored Bedroom and beautiful blue-tuned self-portraits. There was also a lovely temporary exhibit focused on paintings of the Seine, which were picturesque and really nice. Visiting all these galleries allowed me to finish the crossword, which gave me a cool postcard, a nice bonus since I’ve been collecting them on my travels.
From there, I just wandered the canals of Amsterdam aimlessly, admiring the rows and rows of Dutch homes, with their signature white trim and boxy / pi-shaped rooftops, as golden hour began to set in. It left the sky a lovely soft orange-yellow that highlighted the gorgeous fiery colors of the autumn foliage that I was so fortunate to catch since every gust of wind sent tons of leaves scattering down. Every so often, a canal boat would glide through or I’d randomly catch a glimpse of a unique building breaking up the beautiful monotony of homes, like the spires of a church. After a while of doing this, I made my way to the park near the Rijksmuseum since I was too far from the NEMO science museum to get a great sunset view from there and caught a pretty but muted sunset as a result of the clouds rolling in. Once the sun set, though, Amsterdam began to light up and became arguably even more beautiful, certainly stealing the moniker of the City of Lights from Paris. All of the street lamps lining the canals had this lovely warm glow, unlike the sterile white or the intimidating orange lighting, that created this cozy feeling. Around some canals, string-up lights were wrapped around trees and sparkled in the night while others had them attached to boats and bridge outlines that broke up the darkness of the night.