Saturday morning I decided not to get up for breakfast so I showered because I was sweating all night in that hot box of a hotel. That's what you get for staying in the attic; musty and hot. Sallie stayed behind too so I had to wait to shower so I started working on my blog and emails. I take my shower, which was literally a room in the hall that has a shower head at one side, it was bizarre. I come back and Sallie is laying on my bed..in her towel..on my computer..and listening to music. I was like ...hi. She is really weird and a huge moocher so I was uncomfortable. So as I am getting ready I plug my camera in to charge it for the day and five minutes later Sallie asks if it's charged. I told her no that I had just plugged it in. Two minutes later she unplugs it so she can charge her phone. Wtf don't you understand? She is so stupid. Luckily me and John were leaving to go to museums and everyone else was going shopping so I wouldn't have to deal with her.
It was very cold out, but we were going to walk to the museum district and check out a few places then meet back at the hotel around 4p.m. We stopped in a few stores on the way and I ended up getting a pretty cool track jacket that I put on about ten minutes later because it was around 50 degrees and windy. Perfect. We walked for what felt like forever so we asked one guy where the museums are and he said we just had to go down the street and then we asked about the Dutch Resistance museum and he just laughed. Lovely. We walked over to the museum area and spotted the I Am Amsterdam sign so we took some pics. Then we decided to go to the Van Gogh museum which was poppin off. I had to get a hotdog before hand because I was famished and it was delicious.
While standing in line we were both pretty dead and it was only like 1p.m. My legs were really sore and my feet were starting to blister. But we walked all that way so we decided to check it out. I didn't know too much about Van Gogh prior to this trip other than a few very famous works so it was interesting to read all the stuff about his life. He became a painter when he was 27 and then died when he was 37, but managed to create mass amounts of art. He admitted himself into an insane asylum and had some form of epilepsy, which may be how he accidentally cut his ear off. Ouch. He ended up shooting himself in the chest and dying two days later with his brother by his side.
There were a lot of sections to the museum so the first part was all his influences, and believe me there were a ton of them. Then he had a Japanese nature section which was really pretty. There was a huge peasant section. There was a paper section, which was newer and had works that were new for the times for like newspaper type things. There was some Monet and Manat thrown in there also. Then we got to the top section which featured Montmarte where Van Gogh lived for a while. This was the symbolic section and had a lot of cool works. We were both pretty dead after walking around so much but there was a small Picasso in Paris exhibit so we checked that out. It was pretty cool, I didn't realize he did some sculpture work so those were interesting pieces to check out.
After the museum we headed home and made a beeline for the hotel. We got all the way up the death stairs to our room and tried for a solid two minutes to get the stupid key to work but it kept making an angry sound so luckily a maid was around and helped us. Dumbest hotel ever. We got there right around four and then I Skyped with mom and dad. That was fun. I played around on my computer as we waited for the other group to get back and when they did they showed us what they bought and then everyone fell asleep. We got up around seven and decided to go to this Italian place for dinner because the hotel gave us a card for 5% off.
It was a pretty quaint little restaurant but not many people were there. I got a margarita pizza and a beer. The pizza was absolutely delicious and I ate the entire thing and could have had a second. After din we headed to the liquor store and then to the room to drink, but ended up sitting around for a while. Around ten everyone started getting ready so we drank and planned to leave around eleven. Gabby asked for some of my wine which was fine and then go figure moocher Sallie wants some too so she helps herself to the rest of the bottle. I was like really? Did you just finish that? We headed out and walked towards the Red Light District as there are a ton of bars over there. We walked around for a while and met some characters on the way. There are a lot of weirdos in Amsterdam. We finally decided to go into a place and it had big couches so we sat by a group of three guys from London or something. They were really boring so me, Gabby and Meredith chit chatted and got drinks. We left and were heading towards other bars when one of the guys from the last place sprints down and says he wants to come with us but he has to go get his jacket...uhh okay.
He was apparently trying to lead us somewhere, but we weren't members of the hotel so we couldn't get in. Good job. We decided to try a few other bars that were also failures so we ditched the guy and decided to go to the same bar from the night before. It was pretty crowded in there and everyone but me got drinks so we chilled there for a while. The dj played a lot of American music but mainly old stuff like who let the dogs out. As we were in there we slowly concluded that it was an African American bar and we were by far the youngest people there..by a solid 10 or 15 years. We left and headed home and I went to sleep while everyone talked.
We woke up this morning around nine and I packed and then got breakfast. We had to check out at 10:15 so we got a taxi and headed to the train station. The train was on time and pretty crowded but I grabbed the window seat and listened to my ipod. I was pretty tired and kept dozing off and slammed my head into the window. I finally stopped resisting and took a nap, which was great. We got home around 3:30 so I unpacked and then fell asleep. I woke up not too long ago and I am still exhausted so I hope to go to bed around nine or ten. The weather here is great so that was really nice to come home to since Amsterdam was like Chicago November. We have to drop our metro passes off at Accent tomorrow to recharge them and they want them there at 7:15 so of course everyone is being quiet about who is going to take them. I'm not. That's for damn sure.
Tomorrow we have class with Henri and then we are taking a day trip to Chartres, which I believe is southwest of Paris. We are taking a coach bus and we get headphone guides which is sweet. I've been looking up a little bit of info so I have an idea of what we are going to see and it sounds pretty, except for the name. I'm not sure what time I get back tomorrow though. I hope not late. Tuesday will be a long day too, but then we only have class Wednesday and then a four day weekend. I don't have any set plans yet, but we are talking about going to Giverny. I went through a lot of money in Amsterdam so I need to be pretty conservative the rest of the trip, but I only plan on buying a bottle of wine and then that is the last souvenier. I have to send postcards and those things are expensive to mail! But I'm a nice person so I'll do it.
I feel like I've been here for months. I like it in Paris, but I will be very happy to go home where things are simple and convenient. I need Taco Bell for real.
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