Our first evening in Amsterdam was commemorated by a walking tour of the city! I bet you won't believe this but when we arrived (after nearly 13 hours of traveling) we were met but pouring rain!!!! Yay! We traipsed about 10 minutes through the busy streets of Amsterdam to our hostel and were all pretty much sopping wet upon arrival. Our hostel... was interesting to say the least. The location was sensational but the place was old and dodgy (awww, using my new vocabulary for one of last times) and our rooms we the size of my high school locker! Anyway, Amsterdam took me by complete surprise. I'm not exactly sure what I had pictured but the city was certainly better than I expected. The best way I can think to describe it is a nicer, bigger Venice. There are a ton of canals, tram lines, and side streets and every single intersection looks the same... making it really easy to get lost! We sort of have an inside joke with Alan teasing him about how much he uses the adjective quirky to describe a city to us but when he laughingly used quirky to describe Amsterdam, he was absolutely correct! It is so cute, quaint and quirky! Amanda and I found ourselves dying to get out and get lost in the city!
Sunday 8/7 -
Today started with a bike tour around Amsterdam (if course it rained)! The interesting thing is our first day on tour started with a bike tour around rainy Paris and we finished our last day on tour doing a bike tour around rainy Amsterdam. Amanda and I took the chance to relish the sweet symmetry of this and our journey together, especially because we started and finished in London at the Clink hostel where we met! Anyway, the bike tour was great! We had to be up by 7:15am in order to have breakfast and meet our bike tour guide by 8pm! As you can imagine in any large party city, there are not many people out on a rainy Sunday morning, it was as if we had the city to ourselves. We rode all over the town and made a couple of circles through the famous Fondel Park. I seriously did not want to give the bikes back after we were finished. It was absolutely the best way to start the day!
After the bike tour we returned to our hostel to take warm showers and get ready for the day! What started as a crummy, rainy day ended up being a beautifully sunny (very abnormal) day in Amsterdam. We honestly could not have asked for any better afternoon weather. As you can probably imagine Amanda and I spent our afternoon exploring. We did not have one site in mind to see or planned place to go, we simply wanted to go and get lost in the city. We walked the majority of the day and enjoyed every minute of it! There was a gay pride festival in town so the town was decorated in pink balloons and rainbow posters everywhere! It certainly made for some interesting people watching as well!
After a full day of wandering we decided it was best to make our way back to the hostel to prepare for our last dinner and party as a group! This proved the quite the difficult task and it ended up taking us nearly two hours to find our way home. It's never an issue when Amanda and I are lost together because we are both laid back and look at it as an adventure... In fact, I am going to really miss getting lost with her in cities all over Europe.
Once we made it back to our hostel we got ready for our orange party (the orange party was because it is the color of the Deutsch flag and really just because it is always fun to have themed parties)! We met as a group around 6:30pm and walked nearly 45 minutes to the water front to have dinner. Our dinner was at a Chinese restaurant, which I found to be pretty funny seeing as how it was our last meal in continental Europe, but it was mouth watering and delicious! A couple of people by that point had left already or were leaving after dinner so the mood of the group was definitely somber and sad as we were all realizing our journey was quickly coming to an end! Our orange party actually took place on a small dinner cruise type boat and we basically just cruised the canals in our own private boat and spent our final evening together as a European family!
Sunday 8/8 -
Today we are headed back to London and it is such a bittersweet feeling for all of us. After 49 days together, we have grown so close and if course none of are ready to say goodbye to beautiful Europe but many of us are craving the comforts of home and the familiarity and routine of our non-touring lives. We have one final stop this afternoon in Brushe, Belgium to top off our 20th final country and then we are London bound.
Our stop in Brushe was fantastic! I got to try Belgium waffles and fries (yes, this is an odd combination for lunch but since Brushe is where fries were first created and I was going to kick myself if I never tried Belgium waffles I decided to combine them anyway)! After lunch and about an hour of wandering around, our group met up to bury a time capsule. Alan said this was the first time he had thought to do this since this was his first 49 day trip and a few days ago he asked us to each bring something to throw in that would would surmise our trip. We were then to bury it and return to the same spot on August 8, 2031. We all sort of thought this was a silly and useless exercise because the chances of anyone actually coming back were so small but it turned out that regardless of if anyone will come back to dig it up, it was so much fun to perform the "ceremony". Leisha, Kieta, Amanda, and I decided to throw in our Arabian picture form Istanbul. It is hilariously hideous of all of us and we each remember the smells of the costumes, how tired we were and how much fun we had doing it so we found it appropriate.
One by one, everyone put something in and explained the significance. Here is the final product... The box just barely closed!! For those of you from the tour reading this who didn't finish the whole trip, that is actually Thomas on top! Al received the original in the mail and kept him a secret the rest of the trip!
Here is our final group picture (minus about 7 people) just as we were leaving Dora for the last time and jumping on to our ferry to cross back over the English Channel.
We thought it would be smooth sailing into London but we were met by news headlines and worried faces about riots in the city. As we were driving into the city limits we literally drove right through a live riot. Stores and gas stations were being defiled and raided... Cars were being burned... Ambulances driving by us arriving to the scene had smashed in windows... It was scary! Our coach was even targeted by one of the riot members. We aren't sure what they threw and the window didn't break but in all honesty the mood of the bus changed dramatically. Everyone staying in London for a few days started to get worried and I found myself grateful to only be staying one night. When we finally made it to our destination, our area seemed to be very safe which is good and everyone instantly felt better. In a way, it kind of kept us all distracted from the fact that we were leaving each other. Once we got back to the Clink hostel we were met with (surprise, surprise) RAIN!! Here again was another tear deterrent so all in all the goodbyes were happily short and sweet. I spent the rest of the night organizing my belongings and travel accommodations and hanging out with Amanda and the remanning members of our group!
I am now sitting in the airport just 10 minutes away from boarding my plane and I can't believe it is over! I feel like it was yesterday that I was in the Atlanta airport waiting to fly out and begin this journey. I will be forever grateful for this experience and for all the amazing people I have met along the way, especially my sweet Amanda Jane!
I will be back in the US in roughly 9 hours and am eagerly and solemnly anticipating my arrival back in to America. I hope you have enjoyed my blog and following my experiences... It certainly has been life changing! :)
Love,
Lindsay
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Amsterdam, Netherlands and London
