Dear readers, Happy New Year! New Year’s Day brought the end of my Budapest trip. After nine days in Europe, I’m excited to be home. January has been busy and unfortunately I haven’t had much blogging time. Instead, I’ve been spending my time rehearsing for Big Fish at my high school and reading A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It’s an incredible book.

Anyways, we left off as I was heading to Amsterdam for a day after a flight cancellation. We arrived around 9am and made the mistake of lying down in our hotel room for a couple hours. We were exhausted, but sleeping then ended up making it a lot harder to adjust to the new time zone. We stayed in the IBIS Budget airport hotel, and it was exactly what they advertised it to be. Our room was a double bed with a bunk bed on top of it, a shower in the same room, and a toilet room. It was tight, but it was what we needed for that night. 

Our hotel room

After our nap, we headed into Amsterdam. There was a bus station right across from our hotel so it was very easy to get to the city center. Amsterdam is notorious for its museums: the Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, and Rijksmuseum to name a few, but unfortunately, all of these require bookings well in advance, so with our spontaneous layover, we didn’t have the opportunity to visit them. What we did find right next to the Van Gogh Museum was a bustling Christmas market. Walking around the shops, our ears were met by a cacophony of different languages: Dutch, German, French, Spanish, English, Hungarian, Chinese. That’s one of my favorite things about Europe; it’s so multilingual. 

Gulls at the Christmas Market with Rijksmuseum in the background

A potato in chip form and two dashing men

After spending a little while in the market, we continued on towards the canals. Amsterdam has 4 main canals, laid out in concentric rings around the old town. Official records say that there are 165 canals in total throughout the city. They all have a bunch of small boats parked on the sides and are lined by small streets. The building where Anne Frank hid out from the Nazis during the Second World War looks like any other building in the city. It’s a beautiful three- or four-story building right on the canal. It’s crazy to imagine all the stories that are hiding in the attics of Amsterdam and other cities that were occupied by the Germans.

Boy, Bikes, and Buildings by Karen Dunn

Beautiful couple along the Singel Canal by Justin Dunn

Anne Frank Huis

We didn’t have any plans for our stay in Amsterdam, but we ended up in a cheese store, a tulip market, a tulip museum, and a canal-side cafe/bistro where we ate dinner. These were all fun, but the coolest thing about the city is just the streets and the canals. You just have to make sure to avoid the cars and the many many bikes. Even though we wouldn’t have been in Amsterdam if everything had gone to plan, I’m glad we spent a day there. It’s a beautiful city!

Bikers

Tulip market

Light display on canal

The next morning, we got on the 3:48am bus to the airport, flew to Paris and then to Budapest. Budapest was awesome, but I’ll tell you about that in my next blog. Until then!

- Justin Dunn