Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Sav: We woke up today, ready to tackle Amsterdam with Shivani. We met at 10 AM in Dam Square for a three-hour long walking tour of the city that was going to give us a full rundown on the place. Despite Shivani having studied in the Netherlands for the past few months, she hadn’t actually spent much time in Amsterdam and so was equally as excited as us although she only had the day in town.

Meag: The tour was really interesting as neither of us knew all that much about the history of the Netherlands, let alone Amsterdam. And the tour guide had this knack for answering my questions before I even had a chance to get them out! With this tour focusing more on the older history of Amsterdam, we discussed the area’s previous life as basically a wetland all the way up to the Golden Age and then to World War 2. It was a lot to pack in to three hours! There was also of course discussion of topics like drugs, coffee shops, and prostitution, too. It’s a funny set up, but it seems to work well enough.

Sav: We quickly realized that there are hundreds of coffee shops in the area, but coffee in Amsterdam doesn’t actually mean coffee. It means weed. The tour guide spent a bit of time explaining that it was worth checking out some in particular, regardless of your intent to smoke. We thought it was so interesting that weed is not actually legal here, it’s just not criminal. After the tour I can see why Amsterdam is considered a city of free thinkers, with their relaxed laws on weed, paid graffiti artists, regulation of prostitution and heroin clinics, to name a few things.

We were surprised at other characteristics of the city as well, such as its livability. It’s very clean, but not sterile. It’s walkable, but not tiny. It feels safe, but definitely not strict. It’s beautiful, it’s easy to wander around and the people are friendly. I mean, unless you get in the way of a biker you are fine. Based on some reactions of bikers to other pedestrians, I would probably rather get hit by a car than by an angry Dutch man on a bike!

One interesting part of the city is that most buildings are leaning in one direction or another. I don’t mean slightly… like quite obviously tilted in one direction! Sometimes sideways, sometimes precariously into the street. This is due to the fact that Amsterdam is built on more than one million pillars, which was originally wetland as Meags mentioned. This means that over the years the ground has shifted quite a bit and the buildings show the movement very noticeably.

M: Today being Shivani’s last day in the city, we went to the Rijksmuseum to get us some more learnin. As we walked in under the long archway, a small group of buskers were playing some incredible music. I love when this happens, it’s like being serenaded in a romantic comedy just while we’re walking around.

S: A romantic comedy? Instead of a tall dark and handsome man coming up to give Meags a rose while the music plays, she instead has to settle for me running over to talk about taxidermy or the colour of the pigeons.

M: Anyways, this museum is huge. We had a couple hours before close and there was no way in the world we would’ve been able to get through the entire thing. Because of this, we pulled out the map and prioritized. In the special temporary exhibit, there was a room full of Shiva statues. Being Shivani’s namesake, we visited this room and got a few photos of Shivani trying to pose like the statues. She was a couple arms short of getting it just right, but she gave it a good go!

We also visited a stuffed llama because llamas are cool (they are kind of our mascot). And the library in the museum was very beautiful. They have more than 50,000 books! As soon as we walked in the doors to the library we could smell them – kind of dusty and old. It’s a very comforting smell.

I think I can speak for all of us though in saying that our favourite exhibit came next. One room had three dollhouses from Amsterdam in the 17th century. Two of them belonged to a lady named Petronella Oortman, and everything in them is built to scale and with the same materials as the full size original objects. She had miniature porcelain pieces ordered from China and had craftspeople like glassblowers and cabinetmakers build all the furnishings for the house. The three of us were enthralled. Good thing it was the end of the day and there was no one else in this room, because we did not want to move. We spent a good chunk of time here going over every single tiny detail. There was a lot of “Look at this! Look at that!” going on. Even the ceilings were covered in frescoes. It was so cool. On top of just being cool, it is an important historical record of houses in 17th century Amsterdam for academics because every detail is well preserved, in a way that normal houses have not been. It was really fun for my inner eight-year-old who loves dollhouses and my inner history minor who loves seeing the past come to life.

Sav: Predictably, there is a lot of food within the vicinity of our hostel, so we decided to head over there for a final dinner with Shivani before parting ways for a second time. We got some pizza and sat the three of us, talking about this crazy city and everything it encompasses.

We walked Shivani to the train station, gave out some tight hugs and said our goodbyes. We are going to miss her, it was with an immediate ease that we all fell into friendship in Budapest. We are both looking forward to the day when we get to see her again!

Meag: By this point it was late and cold. Conveniently, we had warm cozy beds and a Christmas movie rented already. We crawled into the tiny bottom bunk and got comfy with my iPad set up on our laps to watch the movie. We promptly both passed out within about 20 minutes of the movie starting.

S&M