So then the next day, I went to the Netherlands.
We left for Amsterdam on Saturday the 3rd at like 7 a.m. so that by 9:30, we were walking off the plane in Amsterdam. (Ironically enough, when we got to the boarding gate for our EasyJet flight to Amsterdam, I noticed that the gate immediately next to ours was on last call for Malta, which is where I was originally go when my program ended and before I headed home from Madrid on July 6). It took us a while to find the tourist information counter (where I had to buy a map, they weren't free...of course, as soon as I got to the hotel, I found out I could've just gotten a map there for free ..:..:..) and then we bustled around for a few minutes buying train tickets and finding the train platform. Suffice it to say that the trip over to the hotel was not so fun, especially since I had my big suitcase and my carry-on, so poor Nik often ended up helping me out with one or the other besides having to deal with his own heavy bag; we had to take the train to a certain station, then take a tram
that would leave us right in front of the hotel. But we found no elevators anywhere (including the hotel, which actually had really steep, small staircases, so it was even worse to find ourselves sans ascenseur) and we had trouble figuring out which direction the tram we needed was going, so I ended up having to clamber onto the next tram that passed to ask if it would take us to the street we needed (whose name I couldn't pronounce--Constantjin Huygensstraat). Then, once we'd finally made it to the hotel and up the damned staircase, we found out that our rooms wouldn't be ready until 2 p.m., which was apparently the check-in time. And it was only 11:30 a.m. at that point. So we ended up sitting in the small dining room, totally exhausted, waiting with our bags for our room to be ready. We slept intermittently and were generally totally uncomfortable. And we were so tired from all the running around and the lack of sleep that when we finally made it into our room, we just crashed and slept for a few hours. Eventually, when we woke up and took showers, it was already early evening, and we were both still very tired. Nik said he was feeling kind of sick and possibly even feverish. 
But since we hadn't had much to eat (we'd snacked a little bit on the few things we'd brought with us), we agreed we should go out and find some dinner. We ended up just walking down Overtoom (the street our hotel was on, one of the main streets in the area) (also, Overtoom! What a name) for like 10 minutes until we found a place that looked good and sat down to eat. We actually had a delicious dinner--my club sandwich had two little Dutch flags stuck in it to keep it together, which pleased me--and both felt much better afterward, but still way too tired to do much. It was dark by the time we left, and we figured we should just sleep well to make the most of the following day.
The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed off to the Rijksmuseum, which was about 10 minutes away down Overtoom again. It was a really nice day out, and our plan was to hit the museum for like an hour before heading over to the meeting point for the free, three-hour walking tour we wanted to go on. Nik had indeed had a fever the night before, which had kept him up for part of the night, but he was feeling a little better in the morning. It was still a little rough for him to spend an
hour in the museum, though; but there actually wasn't a whole lot to see, because most of the museum was closed off because of construction. So an hour was actually plenty of time to see what was on display. We saw some cool things, most notably Rembradnt's The Night Watch, which is one of his most famous paintings. There were a few other beautiful works of Dutch art that I liked. From the Rijksmuseum, we started up towards the Royal Palace, approaching the Red Light District, which is where the tour started. We walked for a while, but it was a nice walk because we got to see the city: all the canals (<3), style="font-style: italic;">much appreciated, given that we had a hu
ge group (probably more than 50 people). He took us around the Red Light District for a while, showing us the coffeeshops and explaining that they can't openly advertise the fact that they sell marijuana (even though it's legal), so they use "euphemistic" clues, like making the sign on the door green or calling the place names like, "Feel Good Coffeeshop." And of course, the funniest part is that they can't be direct about what they sell, even though in Amsterdam, it's legal for a single person to carry up to 30 grams of weed. Our guide kept telling us that Amsterdam is a town of contradictions. For example, he told us about a game that is popular among drunken men, which consists of coming out of a bar and grabbing the nearest bike and throwing it into the canal; whoever has the biggest splash wins. This is a common occurrence, and for the most part, it goes undeterred. However, if you are some poor soul who has parked next to the canal and your car happens to fall in, if you call the police and they come and find your car in the canal, they fine you for littering into the canal. If you're inside your car, in the canal, then you avoid the fee. It's pretty funny.
Our tour guide also told us that, despite all the coffeeshops a
nd the fact that marijuana is legal, Amsterdam/the Netherlands is only something like the 7th biggest marijuana user in Europe. Lo and behold, Spain is actually number one. Basically, mostly the tourists are the ones using the coffeeshops and being blazed 24/7. People who actually live in Amsterdam tend to use pot minimally. Marijuana is legal, but hard drugs like heroin, of course, are not; and it seems to work, because Amsterdam doesn't seem to have much in the way of drug problems.
Of course, our tour guide talked about a lot more than marijuana. He talked a lot about the way buildings in Amsterdam were made. Apparently, our hotel wasn't the only example of a tall, narrow building with equally steep, narrow, impossible staircases. When Amsterdam was becoming a real city back in the day, people had to pay taxes on their houses based on their lengths. Therefore, people started building houses that were short length-wise and tall to make up for the lack of horizontal space.
Apparently, there was once a man who wanted to buy a particularly narrow house, and he was actually taller than it was long. Our guide also explained why the buildings are tipped forward. Because the staircases are so narrow, it's really difficult to get big things to the upper floors. All the houses have this hook projecting outward from the top window; they have pulley systems installed in these houses so they can actually drag large objects up. So, you now have this large object hanging from this pulley system. To prevent such pendulous objects from barreling into the facade of the buildings, they actually tilted the buildings on purpose, so that even if the big, say, washing machine hanging from your pulley system starts swinging around, it won't destroy your windows or pretty bricks. So more often than not, we saw tall, narrow, tilting buildings all over the city. And there's actually a logical reason for it. Awesome.
Among the other things we did on the tour: tasted some cheese at our tour guide's favorite cheese store, stopped by some landmarks sites
(New Market, Old Market, the Marijuana and Hemp Museum), went to the coffeeshop Dampkring (where a scene in Ocean's 12 was filmed), and heard more crazy stories from our guide about anything from ecstasy to piss wells (which there are around the city--booth-like structures near the canals where men can relieve themselves). We even spotted one of the famous Febo shops that our guide had mentioned. They're these horrible but brilliant chain stores that basically sell you food via vending machine. Food like fried c
hicken and sandwiches and stuff. It sits in those little compartments for God only knows how long, waiting for someone to deposit money and retrieve them. It's awful--but preposterously brilliant, because they are conveniently located near coffeeshops, for the avid customers who come out feeling the muchies. I actually saw people coming in and out of these shops, and I caught sight of some of the food sitting in its little compartment waiting to be bought. So, so weird. But hey, the people want their food.
The rest of that day in Amsterdam (which, by the way, was July 4, wh
ich we kept forgetting, because there was no one actually celebrating) we spent roaming around in that part of town. After the tour, we were really hungry (since we hadn't really had lunch, and it was almost 5 p.m.) so we went into a nearby Chinese restaurant and had a delicious, relatively quiet (because we were so engrossed in our food) meal. I believe we went back to the hotel for a little while to rest and check up on our flight info for the next day. Then we spent the evening walking through the Red Light district (seeing it when the namesake red lights were actually on), and we topped the night off with a stop at a local McDonald's (curiosity got the best of us; we got mayo packets with our fries) on our walk back to the hotel, where we knocked out immediately because we'd had such a long, walk-filled day.
The next morning, we went straight from the hotel to a restaurant about 7 minutes away, again on Overtoom. It was called Bagels & Beans. Taylor highly recommended it to me, so we decided to give it a try, and it was a great idea. The bagel sandwiches we each had were amazing, and I tried, per Taylor's suggestion, all th
eir fruit juices mixed together, which turned out to be delicious. So it was a very satisfying, well-priced meal that would keep us full for the better part of the day. From Bagels & Beans, we went to the Van Gogh Museum, but as we waited in line, Nik's stomach started hurting a lot again, and he said he wanted to go back to the hotel. Instead, we walked back down Overtoom and stopped at a park halfway between the Van Goh Museum and the hotel. We ended up sitting in the park just lounging around, watching the clouds move in the sky, for about an hour and a half, while Nik rested and tried to let his stomach settle down. But even after that hour and a half of relaxing, mostly in silence, Nik still felt too bad to get up and go to the Van Gogh Museum with me. I was kind of upset because I wanted some company for the rest of the day, since it was our last couple of hours in Amsterdam, and pretty much our last stop in my series of European travels. So I kind of wanted him to push through the stomach pains and come with me to at least see the Van Gogh Museum. But obviously, that was an unfair demand for me to make, because he was feeling absolutely lousy, and it wasn't up to him to just grit his teeth and bear it. Plus, the Van Gogh Museum was expensive (14 euros!) so it wouldn't have been worth it for him to pay that money and not enjoy the art because he was in pain. I spent a while trying to get him to go with me, but eventually realized that he was just feeling too terrible, and that I needed to go right then or just not have enough time to do any of it before going to the airport. So I walked back to the Van Gogh Museum and spent about an hour and a half in there. I saw The Potato Eaters (it's a beautiful, sombre painting, and it doesn't look much like Van Gogh's later work, but it's kind of bleak yet spiritual and just kind of an amazing piece of art to look at) and Crows Over Wheatfield (agreed to be Van Gogh's last painting, from 1889, and it's pretty arresting, because the yellows, reds, and blues are so intense and deep, and there are these sinister black crow shapes interrupting it all) and his Two Left Shoes, which is an awesome painting. I also looked closely at a couple of his self-portraits, because I want to use one of them as an inspiration for a silly painting I'd like to paint sometime before going back to school (a mango in the guise of a Van Gogh self-portrait, entitled Vincent Man Gogh). I love Van Gogh (I feel like it's hard not to) and his paintings are legitimately fun to look at, and there's nothing like looking at them in person, so I was really glad I'd stopped by.
From the Van Gogh museum, I went back up to the Red Light district area, to take another stroll around where the tour had taken us and see the canals again before taking the tram back down to the hotel and meeting up with Nik. Our trip back to the airport was much less strenuous and stressful than our trip from the airport, and the check-in process at the airport went really, really fast, so we got to relax for a while before getting on the plane. We took a cab back to the hostel in Madrid, and with the few hours we had (we arrived back in Madrid at like 10 p.m.), we went back to Taberna Malaspina, because it was by far one of our favorite places in Madrid. I had that incredible carne asada en su jugo again, and drank my last few cups of sangria. We were both pretty exhausted, so after our dinner in Malaspina, we walked back to the hostel (which was good, because I got to take one final look around Sol, Paseo del Prado, and Atocha) and immediately crashed.
Next thing I knew, it was morning, and after a bit of stress getting to the airport and, more importantly, to the right terminal (getting to Terminal 1 from Terminal 4, where we were, resulted in quite the heated argument between a taxi driver who didn't want to drive us over 3 terminals, and the guy in charge of dispatching the taxis at each terminal, who was furious with the taxi driver, because I told him we needed to get to Terminal 1 fast. There was a lot of yelling, while I just freaked out about not making it in time. Needless to say, everything sorted itself out), we got on our plane and in a matter of a few hours, Madrid was miles and miles and miles away.
It's been three weeks now, and I still can't believe I'm home, but more unbelievable is the fact that all of it actually happened. I can't believe how lucky I am to have seen the places I saw and to have enjoyed all the things that came my way. I am incredibly grateful, and so excited to know that next time I visit Madrid, it will feel, at least a teeny little bit, like going home.
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