Netherlands and Belgium

In the start of August, to celebrate my aunt's 50th birthday, my mom planned a girls trip for us (me, my cousin, sister, grandma, mom, and aunt) to The Netherlands.

Once we landed in Amsterdam, our uncle who lives there greeted us at the gate and took us on the train back to his apartment because everyone there only used public transport pretty much. The subway there was so much cleaner than the New York subway or even the DC metro. Once we got to his apartment, we ate Indian food (of course we did) for lunch and then crashed for a couple hours.

There was a pride parade going on that same day, and so after relaxing for a bit, took the train to the parade. The street that the floats were coming down on was the most crowded street I had ever seen. People in their high rise apartments above the canals had their windows open and were blasting music, drinking beer, and waving flags outside. I saw so many little children drinking too as I walked down the streets, and drunk topless strangers lined the pathways dancing to music playing from one of the many lively houses.

The parade itself too was also super fun to watch, and the energy all the various groups had made me super energetic even though I was beyond jet lagged in the moment. After walking around a little bit, we headed back to the hotel, ate a TON of super good room service food, and then fell asleep.

The next day, we got ready and headed down to eat breakfast in the hotel. They had the biggest spread I had seen in a long time, and I made a fancy sandwich with their fancy European cheeses. We then headed out to the Van Gogh museum. There, we saw the majority of Van Gogh's famous paintings, like his self-portrait and wheat paintings. My cousin, sister, and I wandered off in the museum by ourselves while our parents and grandma went on their own.

After, we took a long train with my uncle to go outside the city to the countryside. We went to a small town called Zaandjik where everything was built in an old style. There were tons of windmills everywhere, and after eating lunch at a pancake house there, crossed a bridge to go to a model town filled with fake stores, farmhouses, and pastures.

In the town, we mainly just saw tons of sheep and farm animals grazing the area, but the highlight was getting to climb into an actual windmill. Because the area was known for having tons of windmills, we were able to go up into one to see the view of the town and river from the top. We had to climb this super narrow and sharp ladder to get up, and I actually thought I was going to fall off the entire structure.

After climbing down from the top, we walked around a bit more and then took the next train back to Amsterdam. At the train central, there was a peaceful Palestinian protest, and it was fun to participate because they were chanting in both dutch and English so that foreigners like me could join along as well.

At this point, it was around 6pm and we were thinking of doing one last activity before heading back to our hotel. While waiting for the adults to finish eating at a shop in the terminal, my cousin, sister and I went out to sit and look over the pier. Someone had thrown trash in the river while we were waiting, and a bird ended up drowning in it and a bunch of us were standing over the river trying to help the bird out. It ended up freeing itself and flying away, and everyone started clapping. By this moment, our parents had come out to get us and had planned a canal cruise for us as well.

We walked to the pier nearby and got tickets at the gate for the cruise. The captain we had was really funny, and along every landmark site we passed, he made us guess its significance and then would make a joke about the place.

After finishing the cruise, we walked to the shops on the other side of the street to get dinner since we were in Amsterdam Central anyway. Once we got back to the hotel, we had to quickly pack before showering and going to bed because the next morning we would be checking out.

The next day, we had to wake up early to catch our Eurostar train because we were going to Belgium!! I had been to Belgium once before when I went to London and Paris the year before, but this time we were actually going to be staying in the country instead of just doing a day visit. After boarding the train, I got to work on reading my summer reading books since I had been procrastinating them the entire summer. I looked out the window occasionally, but a lot of the trip was either in the empty countryside or in tunnels underground. By the time I finished reading and annotating both my books, we had reached our destination. Once we landed, we walked (with our heavy backpacks) to Grand-Place de Bruxelles. Because we were staying in a countryside town called Brugge, we had to lug around all our backpacks throughout the city. First, we obviously took pictures in front of the huge palace in the middle of the square, and afterwards, walked around into various side streets.

The combination of the heat and the weight on our backs made walking around literally impossible, but we pushed through and finally arrived at the Manneken Pis fountain. After taking pictures there, we went to the same waffle shop that my family went to last year when we visited Brussels. Once we ate until we physically couldn't anymore, we lounged around for a little while before catching the next train to Brugge.

The train ride took about an hour and by the time we got there, we were all fully exhausted. We took a taxi to our hotel, which by the way, was the coolest hotel I had ever seen. It was actually a palace renovated into a hotel, and every single room belonged to a different royal family member centuries ago. I stayed in Queen Catherine's room, and it was the most old money place I had stayed in.

Once we unpacked, we got dinner at an Indian place next door, and then around 10pm, walked into the city square that was right next to us. The entire place was something out of a fairytale; all the roads were cobblestone and buildings preserved, and there was a surprising lack of cars in the entire area.

After looking around the area and taking pictures, we headed back to our hotel and immediately fell asleep because of how jet lagged we were. The next day, we woke up around 9 and grabbed breakfast at a local waffle shop next door. The waffles in Belgium were the best I'd ever had, and I've been missing them since coming back to the U.S. Anyway, once we finished eating, we walked over to the central square to meet our tour guide who would be taking us on a walking tour of the city. Our guide was actually a Brugge native, so he knew all the small local spots and took us to them. We learned about the significance of the cathedral in the center, and how Brugge used to be a large port city used for trading for centuries. On the tour, we stopped at various canals, nunneries, and lakes that all represented a different aspect of Brugge.

Once the tour finished, we walked to a bunch of the small local shops on the side streets. There was one shop that I especially liked, it was a Christmas antiques store that looked like something out of a 90s movie, and inside they were playing Christmas music as people walked in and out of the store.

After shopping, we came back to the hotel, got our luggage, and waited in the lobby for a taxi to come pick us up as we were taking the train back to the Netherlands that day. Brugge was definitely my favorite part of the entire trip, so it was sad to leave the place but I am determined to live there once I retire. It took about four hours on the train in total to get back to Amsterdam, and once we checked into our new hotel, just relaxed there for the remainder of the night. Our hotel also looked super fancy from the outside because the building shape was an hourglass with pieces jutting out to make it abstract. I felt like all the buildings in Europe were just so much more architecturally advanced and creative compared to those in the U.S.

The next morning, we slept in since we were fully exhausted from the previous day's excursions. Around 11am, we finally headed out to the Albert Cuyp Market to do some shopping. I bought a pair of vintage sunglasses and two bracelets, and my sister bought earrings and a miniature painting. Around 1pm, we took a break and all ate at different random spots we found. Once we finished, we continued to look around, and I found these small y2k boutiques but everything was way too expensive. By the time we left the market, it was around four and so we headed to Amsterdam Central from there to go on the Amsterdam Observatory experience. I decided to go on the ride with my grandma, and so while being held about 600 feet above ground, we dangled our legs off of a swing that showed the entire city skyline.

In the evening, our parents decided to go to Red Light Street and said that we couldn't come with, so instead we bought some ice cream at the nearest AH and played card games the entire night in our hotel.

The next day, which was also our last day, our plan was to visit all the main spots in Amsterdam. First, we took a trip to The Hague because I really wanted to see it after my UN summer program in New York. We needed special access to visit The Hague on the inside, but we were allowed to walk through an outside exhibition and look at the palace through a window. There was also a wish tree outside filled with people's wishes for freedom.

Next, we took a trip to visit the ICC (also on my request), but upon getting there, realized that you needed ID that none of us had with us to enter. So we just stood in front of the building from the outside, took a picture, and continued on our journey.

The next place we went to was the beach. The beach reminded me exactly of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk because of the amount of rides and shops there were.

I really wanted to go on the ferris wheel and do bungee jumping, but we weren't able to since we were on a time constraint. However we still walked the boardwalk and ate lunch at a cool shop that was underneath the boardwalk bridge.

After relaxing there for a couple hours, we set our sights on Madurodam. My uncle actually recommended this place to us, and I had no idea what the place looked like until I got there. It was basically an open museum that had a miniature model of the entirety of the Netherlands. It looked pretty cool to me, since we could walk and see these model trains and boats run underneath us.

My cousin, sister, and I also found this 3d experience room that had a warped tunnel and these cool pictures where it looked like we were posing inside of a painting.

By the time we finished, it was evening time so we just headed back to our hotel, made dinner in one of their small kitchens, and packed up to leave the next day.

Now we were originally supposed to be leaving the next day, and we had all of our suitcases and luggage ready to go, but unexpectedly, our flight got cancelled and we were forced to stay another night. It really didn't end up being that bad at all, because my aunt got us tickets to this upside down museum. It was this really trippy place where everything made us look like we were upside down (hence the name), and they also had other ball pits and mirror tricks there.

When we came back from the museum, it was about 7pm, so we grabbed dinner at the train station and headed back to our hotel to spend the night. My cousin and I shared a room, so we just watched movies for half the night before finally falling asleep.

The next morning, all our luggage was already packed since we were only staying for a night, and after waiting in a long line to get an airport taxi, we finally made it on the plane in time, and headed back to the U.S.