Group excursion to Amsterdam

Another early morning, we were on our way to the train station by 8:30 a.m.

By now, we are very familiar with the train ride to Amsterdam, so it seemed like a quick trip. For the first part of the day, we just walked around and went to a few museums and historical places.

First, we visited the "Our Lord in the Attic" museum, which is a regular canal house that has a hidden church in the attic. It was owned by a Catholic during the Reformation when Catholics were forbidden to hold public services. It was really cool that that large of a church could be hidden and that people went to such lengths to practice their faith!


We went to a couple of contemporary art museums and a photography museum called "Foam." Steef said he was trying to take us to the non-touristy places, which was nice.

They only gave us 45 min. for lunch, and it proved to be too little time... Emily, Allison, Doug, Drew and I went to lunch together, and we found a place and ordered within 10 minutes. Somehow, our food didn't get to us until the exact time we were supposed to meet back, so I had to call Lotte (thank goodness I had put her number in my phone!), and ask them to wait. I don't know if I've ever eaten so quickly!!

The last thing we did was go on a canal tour! The teachers dropped us off and said, "Good luck! See you tomorrow!"

The tour wasn't as great as I hoped it would be, but we still had fun. It had been a hot day, so it was nice to get the cool breeze from the canals. Our tour boats had roofs, but the windows let in some air!



After the tour, we went to Centraal Station to check on tickets to Cologne. Sadly, the tickets were 115 euro, so we decided that it's not really feasible to go to Germany. We're planning one or two shorter trips instead!

Before we headed back to Leiden, we decided to check out a movie, so we found our way to a theater and picked out an American movie that would be played with Dutch subtitles. It was really funny to see how different cultures act at movies. People were just louder and more into the movie... It was fun!

After that, we decided we had had a night. Besides, we have drawing homework due tomorrow!


Random thoughts:

1. Tomorrow is our last drawing class.
2. We only have about a week left of the program, and it's making everyone a little nostalgic...
3. It turns out, many of the bikes we've seen on the streets ARE locked. Lots of them have a thick chain around one of the wheels, so it would be unrideable or others have a wheel lock. Iiinnnnteresting...
4. We still need to eat on a boat restaurant.
5. A bunch of us decided to have a 4th of July celebration the weekend before we leave.
6. I'm still thinking about that hamburger we had last night...
7. We still are very confused about our "final project" for this program... They say being a little confused is a good thing!

This is Emily and me (Magellan and Pizarro). Note that her hair is no longer pink... re: yesterday's post about dying it.