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  • Writer's picturebridurante98

Galentine's Day

Amsterdam Day 1

 

Valentine's Day was the date of our first European excursion together outside of Northern Ireland. Kendyl and Olivia took a flight out of Belfast in the morning, and Sarah and I took a flight out of Dublin in the early afternoon. We chose to go out of Dublin because it was cheaper than Belfast, but after paying the the bus roundtrip ticket and the train to and from the bus station, it may be worth it in the future to just go out of Belfast. Plus, traveling would be a lot quicker that way too because we wouldn't have to sit through a 2 hour bus ride to and from the Dublin Airport. You live and you learn.

Sarah and I finally landed around 5:30pm (now 6 hours ahead of Connecticut), and from the minute we got off the plane we could already tell we were certainly not in Belfast anymore. The Amsterdam Airport is overwhelming, and it took us a little while to navigate through it and figure out how to get to the city center which is where we were meeting Kendyl and Olivia for our Galentine's dinner. We finally found the train we needed to take and made it into the heart of Amsterdam. The first thing we noticed walking around was the plethora of bicycles. I guess for most people it's common knowledge, but I didn't realize that bike was one of the main modes of transportation there. I quickly learned. We walked with our heavy backpacks for a good 20 minutes until we finally found the restaurant that Kendyl and Liv were waiting at. We expected to have trouble finding a place to eat since it was Valentine's Day, but this place looked really nice and there was hardly anyone there. Three of us got these salmon sandwiches that were delicious. After we paid and started walking around outside a bit, we soon realized we had accidentally just eaten dinner in the outskirts of the Red Light District. Oops.

We didn't do much else that night because we were all exhausted from traveling, but we did walk around the city a little bit and went into a couple shops before heading to our hostel. We had to take the bus to get to our hostel because it was pretty far from the city center (hostels in the city center were SO expensive), and that was a bit of a challenge because all of the signs and names were Dutch. Luckily we got off at the right stop and then walked the remaining couple minutes to our hostel - WOW hostel. The hostel itself wasn't too bad. The only downside was that we weren't all put in the same room, which we didn't realize would happen. Kendyl and I were put in one 8 bed dorm, Sarah was put in another, and Liv in another. Liv ended up sleeping in the bed with Kendyl so at least three of us ended up being in the same room. To my surprise, the bed in the hostel was actually more comfortable than my bed at Jordanstown. But I'd definitely prefer sleeping in my less comfortable bed in my own room over sleeping in a room with strangers. It wasn't so bad though, most everyone kept to themselves and did their own thing.

Once we finally got into bed, I really started feeling the culture shock for the first time since I'd come to the UK. Everything felt so different in Amsterdam and I found myself feeling very overwhelmed and wanting to go back to Belfast ASAP.


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