I know this is a little late, but June 20th was a German holiday and I took the opportunity to visit two cities in the Netherlands! I went to The Hague and Amsterdam, and it was so amazing :)
The Hague
This is the justice center of the EU, containing the Peace Palace and the International Courts. I only spent a little bit of time here, and really only went because it made the trip significantly cheaper. That said, I did have lots of fun while I was there! The coolest thing I did was visit the Haagse Markt, which is an open air market that's held every day of the week! I had a sausage pastry and espresso for breakfast, and bought some delicious fresh strawberries and coconut macarons that I snacked on throughout the rest of my trip. There were tons of stands selling fresh fish, and people were eating raw herring and onions for breakfast. One of the more interesting Dutch customs...
Amsterdam
Definitely my favorite city in Europe so far! I was there for three days and got to see and do so many amazing things!
NDSM
The first thing I did when I arrived was take a (free!) ferry across the IJ (which is basically a bay/river I guess) to the modern part of Amsterdam. Called NDSM, it has tons of really famous street art, and there was even a design exhibition for the whole month of June that I was lucky enough to see! There was also a Midsummer Nights festival while I was there, which was sold out but apparently is very significant to Dutch people. Super interesting!
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| The pier was so windy! |
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| A huge feature of NDSM is shipping containers. There was art on them everywhere, and some of the buildings are even made entirely out of repurposed ones! |
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| This was inside the former Netherlands Shipbuilding Company warehouse. Now they're turning it into something called The Treehouse, which is hundreds of (you guessed it) shipping containers and small other buildings that are transformed into studios for artists. So awesome! |
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| Ice cream before boarding the ferry :) |
Sightseeing
NDSM is a pretty non-traditional place to visit in Amsterdam, so I rounded out the rest of my trip with some very typical touristy things, and I'm so glad I did! They're super popular for a reason... :)
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| I don't remember what building this is, but I thought it was very cool looking |
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| Canals everywhere! And also sooooo many bikes! I've heard that there are 3 bikes in the city for every resident. |
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| Stroopwafels are a Dutch dessert that is basically a really thin waffle (almost like for a waffle cone) that's filled with syrup and sometimes topped with chocolate and other things. This is the most famous place in the city to get one and they did not disappoint! |
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| The whole flower market is located on floating boats! I was honestly a little underwhelmed at first because it just looks like regular buildings, but when I saw it from the back it was crazy to think that all these buildings are actually in the canal. |
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| This is also a very cliche drink but I enjoyed it thoroughly :) |
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| I even had lunch at Blue Amsterdam, which has an incredible 360 view of the city! |
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| I spent a lot of time in the Rijksmuseum gardens, which has this awesome giant chess set, lots of places to sit and read, and even featured a special sculpture exhibition. |
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| This windmill is actually a brewery! I felt sort of bad because I didn't drink any beer during my whole visit, but even so this is the coolest place I've ever seen :) |
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| Flowers and canals, my two favorite things about the city :) |
The Beach
My final activity of the trip was to visit Scheveningen, which is a port (I think) in The Hague. There was a tall boat exhibition going on, and I got to watch the parade of ships while sitting on the pier. It was so cool to see them all, and each boat seemed to outdo the last with the size of the masts, enthusiasm of the crew, and super loud Dutch music :)
All in all, an awesome trip! I would go back in a heartbeat :)
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