Day Five – Den Haag, Amsterdam:
I woke up at the lovely hour of 10:30 and said “umm, Natalie... it's 10:30!” Guess our alarm didn't work! But, after the past 4 days, it was very much needed rest. We packed our bags and left them at the hotel and walked to Madurodam, a miniature recreation of Holland. FYI, Holland is a region, not a country. It's primarily the western portion of the Netherlands. Madurodam is definitely a tourist attraction, but it was really interesting seeing (miniature) monuments and establishments around Holland. There were schools, churches, town halls, palaces, parliament, famous homes, train stations, shipping, Schiphol airport, factories, etc... It gave us tons of ideas of places to explore in Amsterdam. We ate a quick lunch, which included krokets (similar to croquettes in the US... but it was some sort of meat in a gravy. very unique...). A little more shopping may have taken place, as well. :) There was also a cute miniature clog factory, and when you put 1e into the machine, a little truck would bring you miniature porcelain clogs. Both Natalie and I now have our own set, they don't fit though.
On the train to Amsterdam, a nice lady pointed out that we were at the Airport stop – since we had so much luggage, she thought we were missing our train stop. When we finally got to our stop, some guys (very, very cute, might I add) saw our luggage and carried it up the stairs for us. I love the Netherlands.
We finally got to our hotel a little after 5:30 and were going to meet Natalie's coworkers at 6. In the 20+ minutes, I fully unpacked my suitcase and changed for dinner. I was simply that excited to be able to finally unpack, I flew through it! Dinner was long and interesting. Malaysian, but not what I'm used to at Malaysian places. I did make a very cute man out of inedible parts of my dinner. There are pictures. Afterwards we walked up and down the red light district. It was not as seedy as I expected. While there were a few shocking stores, there were no naked women. It was rather uneventful, actually. There are a billion coffee shops – those actually look a lot more seedy!
No comments:
Post a Comment