Amsterdam Day 1

There are so many things that contributed to making this weekend so amazing, but the first one by far has to be that my flight to Amsterdam was out of Cork.

My flight was at 6am Thursday morning, which is not unusual, but I did not mind at all.  I woke up at 3:30, left my apartment at 4, and was at the airport by 4:15.  If this flight were in Dublin, where all of my flights previously had been because it is where you can find the inexpensive ones, I would have had to board a bus at 11pm the night before to make my flight on time.  So 3:30am seemed so luxurious to me.

After a quick flight, only 80 minutes, we were in Amsterdam by 10am (9am Irish time). This allowed us to have the entire day in the city.

Upon arriving we checked in to our hostel, and quickly headed out in search of coffee. Caitlin luckily is a coffee addict so she has a sixth sense for finding fun, cute and delicious coffee shops.

 Coffee Cup

We took our coffee's to go and began exploring this city. I think our friend Will, who arrived Friday, said it described it perfectly when he said, "Amsterdam is a very stroll-able".

Caitlin, Me and Nicole

There are bikes absolutely everywhere but this one was outside a yarn store, and I thought it was so cute that they knitted the bike! 

And of course when I passed by a street vendor I just had to get a Dutch donut! It is essentially just a fried ball of dough covered in sugar but is delicious

  

After walking around for a bit we headed in the direction of the Heineken Brewery and did the "Heineken Experience".  It is definitely more of an experience than just a tour because it is so interactive, but fun to see in contrast to the Guinness factory. 

Some of the varying logos on the coasters over the years 

The four important components to Heineken: water, barley, hops and yeast

The reason Heineken is different than other beers is the type of ingredient they use, and how long they process each step

I loved that even the brewery had christmas decorations

Me with the big beer vat 

They have stables inside the brewery. Each horse is named after one of the original members of the Heineken family. 

 Beer bottles through the years

Chelsea, Nicole, Caitlin, Me and Julia (The Cork Girls!) with our complementary Heinekens photobombed by the bartender

The city at night, completely decked out in Christmas lights/decorations so beautiful! 

Even though our travels were a lot easier than normal, we still did not get a lot of sleep and were going all day so shortly after the tour, and a quick dinner we were fast asleep.