Our first day in Amsterdam was a blast to say the least! Arriving bright and early at 6:00am, we hit the ground running. We met with our chaperone, Brian, and got quickly acquainted with the trains and metro and on the way to the hotel, saw some interesting works of architecture. Even just looking out of the plane, one could tell how different it is from Pittsburgh, mainly because of the greenery that seemed to intertwine with every building. Netherlands has definitely done a great job of preserving nature in their cities and buildings, which was very cool seeing within my first hour of being here. Not to mention all the bikes that we saw. Some girls and I started counting how many we saw, but that number was way above 50 within the first hour. So yes, bikes are one of the biggest things here in the Netherlands without a doubt, and always something you need to watch out for when crossing.
We then explored Amsterdam through a scavenger hunt which took us all over the Centre of Amsterdam. When I say all over, I mean walking what seemed to be every block exploring through streets of canals, historic monuments, and even a cheese museum, just to name a few. Exploring the city early in the morning gave us the opportunity to see it without crowds and then to see just how busy the Centre can get. Another thing I found intriguing was that there were barely any garbage cans to throw stuff away at, so I’m interested in figuring out why and how this is possibly more sustainable.
From there we kept on going, which led us to an unscheduled event at Keukenhof. Keukenhof holds an enormous display of springs gardens in full bloom with tulips and many other kinds of flowers. How lucky were we to be able to make it on the last day! Then to end the night we had a group dinner eating Dutch foods and went for ice cream after. This day has left me with curiosity about the intricate buildings and lack of trash cans, as well as over 20,000 steps! Definitely a great start to the trip!
