Bikes make me feel Dutch

Friday:

Today was a bright and early morning... And it was quite an adventurous day.

A group of us (me, Allison, Emily, Madison, Lauren and Doug) decided to go to Nationaal Park De Hoge Veluwe in Eastern Netherlands...

We left for the train station at 8:30 and headed toward Amsterdam at 9:15. We had a 30 min. "layover" while we waited for our train. Allison and I saw a famous Dutch/German actress Linda L-something outside of H&M.


While on the train for Amsterdam, the ticket checker told us we were going the wrong direction, so we had to get off and go the other way. We had to take 2 more trains than planned and then find our bus in Arnhem. One more bus, and we finally made it to the park at about 1:15... Phew!

The park has 1700 free bicycles, so we each grabbed one and hopped on.


The park was really interesting because it went from forest to sand dunes and back very quickly. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but the wind made it a tiny bit chilly. When we were in the trees, the shadows were cool, but in the dunes, the sun was warm!


A few of the people in our group wanted to go to the art museum in the park called the Kröller-Müller. While they were there, we rode around and took pictures.

Allison and I jumping off a large stump on top of a huge dune...

We met back up with the others and decided to just ride around. We found an old hunting lodge and rode through some beautiful areas. There really wasn't that much to do in the park, but it was really fun to just ride around and explore!

When people were starting to get tired, we headed back to the entrance. Because maps were only available for purchase, we used our heads to remember the way back.


Emily and I are usually the navigators for our excursions... This is an old picture, but it demonstrates how we got our names "Pizarro and Magellan."


We left the park around 4 and had to walk about 10 min to the bus stop. We made it back to the train station, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.

One of Emily's friends was in Amsterdam for the weekend, and since we were going through there already, Allison and I decided to stop there to meet up with her friend.

We were really hungry when we started looking for dinner, so unfortunately, we got sucked into a really touristy place. As we walked down the street, people at each restaurant were waiting and trying to get us to come inside. We looked at the menu at an Italian place, and the owner said to us, "We have a great table for you... a classic table... the food here is delicious... top knotch..." We said we'd eat there, and he ushered us in and had the most fluent English-speaking waitress wait on us. It was obvious that everyone in the restaurant was a tourist (college kids, families, etc.), so we felt like we were selling out a little bit. But the pizza Allison and I shared was good!

We met up with Emily's friend after dinner and had a pint before heading back to Leiden. We got back to Leiden at about midnight and gave in to the temptation of Burger King... but it tasted soo good!

Saturday:

I finally got to experience my first Leiden farmer's market this morning, and it met my expectations! The market is held on and around one of the main canals in old Leiden. There were fresh fruits, fish, nuts and candies, clothing, music, jewelry, flowers and more!

Also at the market, we had to get ourselves a treat that we had been hearing about from the other people who had already been to the market... fresh-made stroopwafels. I think my uncle Brian may have given these to us before, but they are delicious when fresh off the griddle! Now I'm addicted...


After the market, we went back to the dorm for a while. Allison, Emily, Doug and I gathered around 12:30 to go to Amsterdam.

It's really nice that Amsterdam is so cheap and convienent to get to, because then we don't feel like we have to cram everything into one day or weekend. We can go for an afternoon and do a few things at a time without wearing ourselves out!

This day, we went to Amsterdam's science center, NEMO. It is built in the shape of a boat and overhangs the water by 99 feet!

It had five levels with really fun stuff! I love the science center in Des Moines, but it isn't so exciting when you spend every weekend there... I had an awesome time playing with all of the activities and learning about new subjects. Most of the information was in Dutch, but some things were also written in English and others could be deduced.

We really didn't have a lot on our agendas after the science center, but we decided to do a bit of souvineer shopping. We went into a few shops, but most of them had the exact same things with maybe a few differences...

We chose what we thought would be a good place for a burger because it advertised 2 hamburgers, fries and a salad for 7.50 euro. A think, juicy burger sounded delicious to all of us, and our stomachs were growling, so we were a bit disappointed when we saw what we ordered...

We did a bit more shopping and a bit more exploring before we headed back to Leiden for the night.

When we got back, the dorm was very empty... The girls from Central were gone to London and Paris (2 groups) this weekend, Lauren was in the Hague, Madison was in Amsterdam visiting a friend, and Drew was out somewhere...

It was oddly quiet, so Allison, Emily and I watched some YouTube videos, I talked to Chris, and then I went to sleep!

Sunday:

Today, I slept in and then had a catch up day. I went through, edited and posted my pictures from Rotterdam, the national park, Amsterdam and Paris. It had taken me a whole week to sort through all 850ish photos from Paris!

I worked on my graphic design homework and made myself lunch and dinner. I talked to the other people as we got bored and walked around, but then we decided to watch a movie in the evening. We just got done with that a little while ago, and I'm getting ready to head to bed... It's been a good weekend!

We're thinking about Cologne/Dusseldorf, Germany for next weekend!