This past weekend, I visited Amsterdam for the second time. This time around, however, I decided to try something new. I recently discovered a website called couchsurfing.org, which lets you stay with locals of a city for free. You basically send them a request and tell them how long you will be in the city and many will tell you they can/cannot host you. So, while I was in Amsterdam, I was hosted by a different person each night! What an adventure!
Fax (or Emmanuel), my first host in Amsterdam. He had a place in a great part of town, which he called his "palace". It was very colorful...orange, red, pink, green, blue...We ended up staying in that night and had a good time talking to each other about life and our travels.I hung out with my friend Pepe during the day. We went to the Anne Frank museum, pictured below, which was kind of a disappointment. The whole place was completely renovated and modernized and I didn't really get a sense of what her life was really like in there. Yeah, I saw the diary and where everything happened, but it just wasn't what I expected.
Inside the Van Gogh Museum. The guard yelled at me for taking this picture and threatened to take my camera away!
The second night, I was hosted by Teun. Him and his friend cooked me a nice dinner and then Teun and I went on a walk in the park and he took me to a local Dutch pub, Ruk and Pluk.
After the pub, we went back to his place. We enjoyed a nice
bottle of Argentenian wine I brought him and listened to some great music.
Teun, approving my music ---->
<--A picture in Teun's living room Teun had to leave early in the morning to go to a bachelor party and gave me the responsibility of hosting his next guests, Carlos and Roser, an awesome Spanish couple. I let them in, showed them around, and then we went around the city to eat pizza and visit a coffee shop.
Pepe and I visited the Heineken brewery, which was a blast. We saw how the beer is made and discovered the beer's history. It's amazing how much better Heineken tastes in Holland...it's smooth, creamy, and easy to drink. We had a good 3 or 4 beers and realized that people were taking one or two sips out of their beers and then leaving them on the counter. We asked the waitress if we could have them and she brought us fresh beers. Cheers!The last night, I stayed with Thomas. He actually is half-French and had a few French couch surfers over, which was great. After dinner, I met up with Paul (no picture), who I had actually met in Rome the weekend before. We enjoyed yummy Belgium beer and talked about life. It was great to see someone I met in Italy and then see them in the Netherlands the next weekend. I love my life:)
Dinner prepared by couchsurfers:)
Breakfast in the morning. Tom on the left, Julie on the right...Haha, I caught Julie at a bad time. Tom made me a traditional Dutch breakfast and then gave me a ride on his bike to the tram station, which was amazing.Next destination --> Berlin!
