Friday 3 May 2013

Visit to the Netherlands


Greeting from the Netherlands!

Like I mentioned in this post just after New Year my sister moved to the Netherlands for some months. Me and A finally flew to Amsterdam on Saturday and met my sister in Amsterdam on the afternoon. My sister does not live in Amsterdam but was there to visit some other friends of her at the same time.

Amsterdam was jam packed of people because of the Queens day that was on Tuesday the 30th of April. All the tourist shops were full of all things orange. Orange apparently is the colour of the monarchy and everyone was dressed in orange or had some orange accessories.


I had been to Amsterdam once before, but A had never been there and that is why we decided to fly there. I do like Amsterdam a lot. It's a beautiful city, it has really good public transport, it's compact to walk around too and all the canals give it a very nice atmosphere. On Saturday me and A took a one hour canal cruise to get a good image of the city. After the cruise we visited some shops but did not do much shopping. We had a quick dinner with my sister and then went to bar for a while to have some Dutch beer. Me and A left from the bar after the sun had set and went to the red light district. I do think the red light district is a horrible place in principle but it is worthwhile seeing anyway.


On Sunday we just had time to visit the flower market and then rented a car and me, A and my sister headed towards the south of Netherlands where my sister is living. We quickly visited her workplace and the place where she is staying. She only has a room in one apartment, so we did not stay at her place but instead we stayed at her friend's place which happened to be on Belgium side. It was really cool to stay there, she had such a good facilities for us, it was really nice she was able to host us.


On Monday my sister was working and me and A visited two close by cities. After the breakfast in Belgium side we visited Maastricht and had coffee there. Then because we had time we drove to Aachen on German side and had lunch there. So in the end, even thought we were only supposed to go to the Netherlands, we actually visited three different countries. For dinner with my sister we again returned to Belgium.


On Tuesday morning we drove back to Amsterdam and took the flight home to celebrate first of May in Finland. We had a very nice trip with just good amount of things to do. 

6 comments:

  1. Central Europe is a small place :D I wish I could visit Amsterdam too, it sounds very interesting.

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    1. Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities. I really suggest going there at some point.
      I'm always surprised how easy it is to cross the border in central Europe. It's like there is no border at all. I know that in Finland we basically have the similar thing but one usually needs to at least cross a sea which makes the border crossing bit more complicated.

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  2. What a lovely trip! I've been to Amsterdam, but not Belgium. I agree, it is a lovely city--I didn't have enough time there--and I didn't have enough money for a canal boat ride. That would have been fun!

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    1. What I was able to see of Belgium was that it was very similar to Netherland, atleast the countryside and small towns.
      Next time I go to Amsterdam I'd like to rent a private boat and go with that around... no idea what those cost though.

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  3. Three countries in one day. Gotta love Europe.

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    1. That was fun, I took lot of bad pictures from the moving car of the border crossing :)

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