This past weekend I had the privilege of going to Amsterdam with my friend Allison! We were able to find a very cheap tour through Viator that went to Amsterdam and Brugge for the weekend. It included transportation and a hotel all for £185! (The link for the tour can be found here, it also departs from London and a few other major cities in England)
Friday we set off for Amsterdam via car to Dover, where we caught a bus that boarded a ferry to Calais, France. It was a long night with not a ton of sleep, but eventually we got to Amsterdam in the morning!
We began the day with a canal tour that took us around the city through the central waterways. Amsterdam is known for its incredible engineered waterways that make the city super accessible by boat. We then went on a short walking tour that took us through the narrow streets and past glittering canals. We saw the palace and the town square as well as the museum campus where the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum are located (as well as the famous I AmSterdam sign is located). We then hopped a tram back to the central train station and too a train out to Haarlem.
Haarlem is a very special place to me because it is where the events described in one of my all time favorite books took place. In the years of World War Two, Corrie Ten Boom and her family hid Jews in a hideaway they built in their house in Haarlem. Though miraculously all the Jews they sheltered survived and were able to escape the Nazis, soldiers found the ration cards Corrie had been hiding for the people she was hiding and she was sent to a concentration camp along with her sister. She is such an inspirational person and kept up her faith and her astoundingly positive attitude throughout the worst of her times in the camp, writing about it in her book The Hiding Place which has been one of my favorite books for years. I was able to go to the house and see the rooms where all the events took place, it was such a surreal experience.
Our time in Amsterdam was really amazing, the city has such a distinct culture and I definitely want to go back with more time to explore the city and the incredible museums they have there.
The next day we headed to Brugge, Belgium which is a beautiful, well preserved, medieval town. We had some beef stew, a native dish in Belgium, and walked around the old cobblestone streets lining the canals. We also bought some amazing Belgium chocolate (the entire city smells like chocolate- it's amazing) and saw some of the incredible churches scattered around the city, including the one that houses the Madonna, an early Michelangelo sculpture.
It was so fun to get away for the weekend and see these two cities with such distinct cultures. We were excited to get back to Cambridge, though, and begin our last week (sadly).