I should probably explain how this works first. There is a full time student here named Pascal who is from Germany and he organizes student trips to different cities and then just charges a little extra so he can go for free. It actually was really reasonable in my opinion and it was nice not having to plan anything, so even though we paid for him and all of our drivers, it was still definately worth it. Also, he actually did an exchange year in high school at Kapaun Mount Carmel in Wichita, Kansas... so he said he's been to Kansas City several times and loves it there. Anyways, he rented four cars for us to drive to Dover and at Dover we drove the car onto a ferry and the ferry took us across the English Channel to Calais, France from where we drove off the ferry and the remaining four hours to Amsterdam. One student noted that we were in four different countries in four hours time (England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands). I thought that was kind of cool.
Anyways, we were supposed to leave the dorm at 6:30 in the morning but there was some problem with the rental cars where they didn't have one ready for us so we didn't end up leaving until 10:30. It was supposed to only be a two hour drive to Dover but because of traffic it took us an hour just to get out of London so it ended up being almost a three hour drive. When we got to Dover we had to go through border control and most cars in front of us just zipped right on through but when we came up they questioned us for like 15 minutes. I think we just looked really strange because our driver Sergei is from Ukraine, then we had Fernanda from Brazil and Rallie from Bulgaria and then four American students and of course of the American students Lain had a temporary passport because he is the one that has lost his passport twice already. It also probably didn't help matters that the guy questioning us was French and barely spoke any English. It took a while to explain that we were students from London traveling on a weekend trip but once that was clear he let us through.
For some reason I didn't realize we would actually get to drive the car up on the ferry so that was kind of funny to me. The ferry was actually more like a cruise ship with restaurants and shops. We just ate some food and played cards for the hour and a half long ride. I learned a really fun new card game that I'll have to teach everyone when I get back.
When we drove off the ferry in Calais, we thought we were following Pascal's car in front of us. It wasn't until about ten minutes of following this car that we realized about 90% of the cars in France look exactly like his rental car and we had been following the wrong one. When we called they were just pulling off the ferry. Unfortunately, we also happened to be the only car without a GPS system but luckily our driver mapquested directions to Amsterdam so those worked quite well to get us there. We actually stayed on the same road pretty much the entire way but it was confusing because the road kept changing names and we kept thinking we had missed a turn when we would then realize that the road name had just changed to the one we needed to be on. The directions we had were to the airport so once we got there we just stopped at three different hotels to ask directions to our hotel. The nice thing about the Netherlands is that pretty much everyone speaks English there. I didn't meet a single person who couldn't speak English. We somehow made it there an hour before all the other cars with GPS systems too. The roadtripping ended up being a blast, mostly just because everyone in our car was a lot of fun to talk to and we played games and music and chatted the whole way there. Fernanda used to be in medical school in Brazil (there you enter med school right out of high school and it is a 6 year program) but she decided there was more to life than studying so when her parents decided to move to London a couple years ago she decided to quit med school and moved here with them and is now a finance major. She said she loved med school because it was so interesting but just that she didn't have a life anymore. It wasn't exactly a motivating chat for me, but it certainly didn't make me change my mind at all about my future plans. Fernanda was really nice and probably one of the funniest people I've met here. She said she covered her Brazilian passport with a case so people couldn't see she was from Brazil because everytime a Brazilian noticed it they would start talking to her and she got annoyed. But from the way she described Brazilians as chatty folk, well she certainly fits right in there. But she was really nice and easy to get along with and made the trip more fun.
Lots of windmills in Belgium.
I tried to get a picture of a sign pointing the way to Amsterdam, but my camera wouldn't cooperate with the moving car.
For once, I just sat back and let everyone else figure out how to get to Amsterdam. Fernanda and Phil (from KU) were our two navigators for the trip with the mapquest directions.
Once we got there (much later Friday night than the original plan), we just walked around the city for an hour to see it before going to bed. We stayed at a hotel outside the city near the airport and just took a fifteen minute train into the city. I would have rather been in the actual city, but it wasn't so bad because we stayed in the city all day long and just came back when we were ready for bed.
On Saturday morning we were going to get up early and go to the Anne Frank house but we overslept about an hour and got up at 9 instead. We wanted to make a bike tour that started at noon so instead we just went straight to that and made it just in time for the noon tour. It was freezing cold out but our tour guide was great and it was a fun-filled three hours around the city. My bike was named "Hannah Montana". Maddie's bike was named "Jamie" for some reason! Our tour guide (Mike) got a degree in European history so he told us a lot of interesting facts about the city. Way back during the 80 years war with Spain, Antwerp used to be the biggest trading city but the Spanish blockaded it when the Dutch revolted and so everyone moved north to Amsterdam with easy water access. Did you also know the Netherlands is called that because 50% of the land is below sea level and it is basically one giant swamp and hence nether land (no land). We rode our bikes around different canal areas and saw the Old Church (built in the 1200's), the New Church (built in the 1300's) and the West Church which was the first Protestant church. A sign associated with this church and that you see a lot around Amsterdam is three vertical X's which each stand for a different disaster that plagued the city: the fire, the flood and the plague. Mike also told us he only pays 125 euro a month for his healthcare plan and gets unlimited services. Course, who knows how long it takes to get into the doctor... but he seemed to be obsessed with the awesome healthcare in the Netherlands. Oh and also in these pictures below there are some photos of boats on the canal... these are actually houses that people live in! Mike said these are now prime real estate, but personally I don't think I would want to live on a boat.
After the bike tour we went to tour the Heineken Brewery. It was probably the most fun museum I've been to because it's very interactive. They demonstrate how they make the beer...did you know that it's actually 90% water? Then they add barley, some other thing I forget the name of and finally yeast. We got to try a sample of just barely and water before the other ingredients are added... not very tasty. They also have this simulation ride where they take you through the brewing process as if you're the beer. They shine hot lights on you for the brewing part and sprinkle water on you at parts of it and then the platform you stand on sways back and forth as they mixed you up and then they shake you up and bottle you. It was really funny. They also had a room where you could just sit and watch all of their commercials dating back to the 1950's. Then at the end of the tour they gave you a glass of Heineken to enjoy.
They also had a place where you could make your own Heineken music video so this is us on the TV screen.
After the Heineken brewery we went and ate at a Mexican restaurant... my first Mexican food in Europe! It was soooooo good. Then we walked around for a bit and called it an early night so we could go back to the hotel and swim in the pool for a while. The next morning Maddie and I woke up extra early (7:30 am!) to get to the Anne Frank museum before the lines got too long. It had snowed overnight and all the shops were closed Sunday morning so I felt like we had the entire city to ourselves and it was so peaceful and serene with large snowflakes coming down. The Anne Frank house was SOOO cool. I remember reading her diary when I was little and we actually got to go up into the annex that was hidden by a swinging book case where they hid out for two years before being discovered. We got to go into the actual room that she stayed in and wrote her diary in. They had to keep the windows covered all day long with black-out curtains and they had these up just like it actually would have been when they were there. I think I would have gone crazy being hidden in a tiny attic space like that for so long. It was so interesting though and I am so glad we went. They didn't allow photography inside, but here is a picture of the outside of her house, along with some other pictures from the trip.
The Anne Frank house is next to the one with the red awning. The bottom two floors were her father's business workshop and they hid in an annex after his business was taken over on the top two floors. They used to build the houses really narrow but tall because the housing tax was based on how wide the house was along the street.
On the way home we stopped in Calais, France for a while. It really wasn't that neat or pretty, but there was an 800 year old tower there so I took a picture.
All-in-all, a very successful and fun trip. I was expecting Amsterdam to be rowdy and a bit scary just because it's a very different culture from what I'm used to, but it was actually a very calm and quaint city. I wish we could have had more time there, but I'm glad I got to go. Now I am completely ready to be in London and not travel for the next three weeks. And Mum and Pops will be here soon!!!
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