Makelaarsbruggetje

After my parents left, Drew and I met up with one of my friends from my Engi 120 class, Jack Kaplan. We spent most of the day walking around with Jack catching up on each others lives and our travels. My favorite stop while walking around was getting stroopwaffles at the original stroop waffle stand. The stand was located in the middle of a cute street market and the waffles were absolutely amazing! We each got a chocolate stroopwaffle which has chocolate topping on half of the waffle. We were instructed to start our “experience” on the non-chocolate side and then work our way to the chocolate side which was smart because it allowed us to have the true stroop taste before indulging in the stronger flavors of the chocolate side. We also waked around some of the major parks of Amsterdam which had many cute dogs! The dogs would even jump up and drink out of the fountains which was aDOGable! After Jack left for his train to Geneva, Drew and I went back to the museum quarter to hangout by the fountain some more. Drew and I had a nice heart to heart there and caught each other up on our lives which was really nice. It’s really special to be able to pick up right where we left off after going to colleges states away and be able to maintain our close friendship for so many years! We then went to the A’DAM lookout to enjoy the sunset. The lookout has a great view of amsterdam and a fun elevator ride to the top with a funky light show. At the top we did a swing ride which goes off the edge of the building. The swing ride was actually a little scary even though it was very safe and we were buckled in. It was super fun to do and it was a crazy experience to be swinging right over Amsterdam! We had a lot of fun with various photo ops at the top and enjoyed the nice view of the sunset. After we were done at the lookout we bought some picnic food and had a canal side picnic for dinner! The canal we had dinner at was surprisingly relatively quiet which was nice for dinner. After dinner we walked one street over and were shocked to find what was probably the busiest ad craziest street in the red light district. After three previous night of walking around the red light district I never made it to this street which was surpassing and showed how huge the red light district really is. We then did our Amsterdam nightly ritual of walking around the red light district at night. This time we were braver and walked down the super narrow alley with windows on both sides. It surprisingly wasn’t that uncomfortable to walk down because at this point we were pretty used to walking around the area. When we made it back to our hostel we FaceTimed KC and Liam and tweeted at Kyle Planck and Mr.Carmean which we had a lot of fun doing! It was nice to keep in touch with everyone and reminisce about our high school days. We may have been a bit loud and annoying doing this in the hostel lobby but I guess that was fitting since we were also pretty loud at various band events back in our high school drum line days :).Read more