Abroad Chronicles IV: AMSTERDAM

School has been insane the last month or so since my last post, but I finally have no real commitments (aka, none in the upcoming week) and can take some time to discuss where I've been recently. The weekend following my day trip to Manchester, I went to Amsterdam with my best friends from high school for Grace's 21st birthday. What a wonderful, beautiful city. Here are some pictures from the weekend!

One of many canals

Statue of Anne Frank near the Anne Frank House

Here, we ate "pancakes" and marveled at the cats that roamed this restaurant

The Anne Frank House + queue to get inside

Museumplein at sunset

Museumplein, pt. II

Inside the Tulip Museum gift shop

Amsterdam is a lovely city and I wish I'd had more than one full day there to explore it all. But in the day that we had, we went to the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum and a Christmas market. The Anne Frank House was my favorite - I've never read The Diary of Anne Frank, but have always wanted to, and seeing the house she hid in as well as her words on the wall was incredibly moving. I wish I could adequately put feelings into words to describe it to you all, dear readers, but you'll just have to trust me that it was like nothing else. And Van Gogh was amazing, too, if a little disappointing - they didn't have Starry Night in the museum - but regardless, they had plenty of amazing pieces and so much information about Van Gogh's life as well. Van Gogh as an artist means a lot to me - I feel like I grew up surrounded by his work, from prints we had in my house to my dad singing 'Vincent' by Don McLean.

I hope to someday return to Amsterdam, perhaps in the near-month off I'll have next semester, or maybe again, later, when I'm older. Nonetheless, I am ever grateful for this small chance to explore this beautiful, quirky city.