I had never visited the Netherlands. My family did have a Dutch foreign exchange student my freshman year in high school but I was never interested in visiting the country, maybe for that reason. I figured I could delay a visit to Amsterdam until I was 85 years old – presuming that it would be the easiest place in the world to travel to, and probably the safest. After all, it’s flat, full of bicycles and Europeans; no point on rushing there, I can tackle when I have entered my “boring travel” mode.
But then something crazy happened — I visited Amsterdam twice in the same summer. I stopped in Amsterdam for five days on the way to Scotland, the city is a convenient stop en route to the rest of Europe too and then again traveling from the USA en route to Austria. My time visiting was so great that I plan on making it a regular entry and exist destination to and from Europe, when possible.
Well, as everyone else already knows, Amsterdam is a pretty great place. It has a youthful, energetic and cosmopolitan energy to its personality and its no wonder that it attracts people all over the world to make it a new home. The country is very accommodating to foreigners who want to relocate to the Netherlands. I learned that as a small country it strategically enables foreigners to easily relocate, work and live in the Netherlands as a way of competing for intellectual talent with its neighboring EU members.
Because of the cosmopolitan vibes there is a lot of great food everywhere. I ate as much Asian as possible as in my typical south American haunts it is really difficult to find good Chinese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese fare. Visited a few museums including the obligatory Vincent Van Gogh museum. Great artist, but a lot of hype. There must be an entire industry that profits from his career which is tragically unfortunate. I suppose he’d probably relish the well-deserved attention however.
