Retrospective Amsterdam

I realised what a failure I am as a blogger; I've missed out an entire city! Soooo...

A month or so ago I went on a day trip to Amsterdam with the international student organisation. We also stopped off at the wee neighbourhood of Zaanse Schans to get a dose of historic adorableness.

We're on the bus- so much excitement. 

The oh-so-Dutch windmills at Zaanse Schans. 
The windmills had epic names like the
young sheep, the seeker, the cat and,
 my personal favourite, '"the crowned poelenburg".

Look! A massive clog! And people crouching in it!

Cheese tasters! Mmmmm- we were cheese ninjas and
tried all the testers without buying any, including GREEN cheese.

Clog museum. So many facts about clogs!

We carried on to Amsterdam, arriving about lunchtime. So of course we first wandered off to get some food. The CANZ crew (people from Canada, Australia and NZ - dubbed so because we kept ending up together) found ourselves in a crepe shop eating nutella crepes. Superduper yum, and I think we were okay with not being particularly traditional, considering that apparently involved eating raw herring.

Then we were off on a canal tour! Very pretty.

Then we trooped around and found the 'I amsterdam' sign

After the sign we had 'free time', which was really exciting. We had a whole city to discover! Naturally, I went to a brewery.

The Heineken brewery and museum. We learnt to pour the perfect pint. 

After the well-spent free time, we were herded back into a group to visit the Anne Frank House. This was really cool for me, because I'd read the book a few times when I was younger. So I spent the whole time with my mind being blown that we were in her actual house. It was quite eerie.

After this we realised we hadn't had dinner, and were absolutely starving, so like the rational, well-bred people we are, we bolted to the nearest McDonald's. Then it was off for a wander around the red light district. That was a pretty weird experience.

My attempts to take photos of how pretty Amsterdam was by night failed miserably.
So I pinched this one off the internet.

Then our day was finished, so we hopped back on our nice warm bus back to Tilburg. In classic exchange style, this included blasting the music and a bottle of wine :)

I don't have many fun facts to share this time, because we visited slightly random things and I didn't obsessively research beforehand. So for more fun check out Amsterdam's wikipedia page :)