Bits of Days

Read Day 1 and Day 2.

On the third day, we explored Amsterdam quite a bit. To save money we decided to buy some bread and chips at the grocery store and eat them at Vondelpark (if you look on the map it’s the biggest park near Amsterdam, but accuracy not guaranteed). The weather was acting strange — it rained for a minute then the sun shone the next minute. Fortunately, when we actually sit down to eat, the rain stopped so we could actually enjoy our lunch.

A couple of ducks approached us and we gave them our chips. Slowly their ‘friends’ showed up and it was funny seeing them running to be the first to get food.

After lunch we walked around quite a bit. I always wanted to take a picture in front of I AmSterdam sign (‘pic or it didn’t happen’) so we looked for it. On the way there, we found this nice small hill overlooking Concertgebuow which had a quite nice view. I read somewhere that you could actually watch a free concert at Concertgebuow on Wednesdays when they have tech rehearsal for the real concert in the evening. We were there on Friday though so we missed it.

Finally, I AmSterdam! It was really crazy seeing how many people tried to take pictures with the sign! It looked like the whole city was there… It’s really hard not to have other random people photobombing our pictures, really.

Katie always wanted to taste Dutch street food, despite people saying “You don’t come to Amsterdam for street food”. They also said Dutch cuisine was influenced a lot by Indonesian cuisine, so I wasn’t really keen on trying it. Luke and I just got some fries with this sign at the counter and Katie got some herring with pickles and hot dog bun (which turned out to be not so nice).

The food stall was close to Anne Frank House, and we passed by to see how it looked like. Man, look at that queue! And that’s not even the end of it! Something to keep in mind is to buy the ticket online if you want to visit it sometime. It’s €0.50 more expensive but definitely saves a lot of time.

We also visited the flea market at Waterlooplein. To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of flea market, but I think if you want to bring home some souvenirs you better buy them here. We know souvenirs in the tourist areas are overpriced, so I think it’s a nice alternative with more affordable price.

Amsterdam is really well known for its ‘cannabis culture’. There were coffeeshops and the smell of weed all around — even at Keukenhof! They even sold these candies. Not sure if they’re ‘real’ candies in disguise or actually have weed in them…

If you look at Dutch houses closely, you can see that they are really narrow. It was because the wider your house was, the more tax you had to pay, so since people were not that rich, they built narrow houses. Furthermore, because the houses were narrow, the staircase inside the building was also built narrow to give more living space, so they could not transfer furniture to the upper floor using it. The solution was to attach a hook in front of the building to lift the big furniture and transfer it through the window — and that’s why Dutch houses especially in Amsterdam have this kind of hook. Nowadays they have better technology but most of the hooks are still intact.

Our time at Amsterdam was limited so we had to go home the next day We also traveled on a tight budget so we decided not to visit museums, try the canal tour, or rent a bike. Nevertheless, we really had a nice time there and I would really recommend for anyone to visit it. There are SO many things to see and SO many things to do so I’m pretty sure you’ll have a good time there

For the second day, we spent the whole morning at Keukeunhof, the biggest flower garden in the world. The garden itself is not located in Amsterdam but in Lisse, around 1 hour from Central Station by train and bus. If you want to go there with public transportation, I suggest for you to get a combo ticket, which includes return bus ticket from Amsterdam or Schiphol/Leiden. On Keukenhof website they say don’t sell tickets on Keukenhof Express bus that takes you from Schiphol airport to the garden, but when I was there, they did! Nevertheless, they only sold return ticket which cost €9. Keukenhof only opens in March through May so if you want to visit this garden, plan your visit ahead.

We got there at 8 am in the morning. Our host drove us there which was nice (so we cut our transportation cost a bit tehehe). The garden opened at 8 am so only few people were there. In fact, I really advice you to go there early in the morning! As time went by more people came and the garden slowly lost its ‘magical’ view because the place getting more packed. We really enjoyed our morning stroll and was glad we came early.

I LOVE tulips and have liked them since 5th grade — I even named my girl scout troop ‘Tulip’ — and the place was simply beautiful. There was also a windmill which you could climb on and it was so cool! See, I never climbed a windmill before. I’m a little bit afraid of heights so I quickly climbed back down

You can also rent a boat that goes around the garden (I think).

There was also a section where you can take pictures with animals. There were rabbits, chickens, turkeys, pigs, ducks, etc.

We easily spent more than three hours roaming around the garden before we decided to go and eat overpriced lunch. I was hoping to find a cheap fast food restaurant but they only had Keukenhof’s own restaurants which spread around the garden.

After lunch we decided to walk around one more time before we came back home. We went to this orchid exhibition near a restaurant called Beatrix. It was awesome! My mom love orchids she probably would buy everything if allowed.

I loved Keukenhof so much I would definitely come back. The ticket price was €15 but it was well worth it (well, tulips are expensive anyway…)

Have you been to Keukenhof?