European Whirl - day 2

April 11^th’03

Amsterdam … INNA hostel

Breakfast at 8; depart at 1 … so 5 hours only to explore Amsterdam! How to make the most out of it, was a very big challenge to me. So, forget about taking long queue to enter either Van Gogh Museum or Rijksmuseum or Anne Frank Museum or … I decided to experience the city. Since I’d taken West part of the city yesterday afternoon, I decided to walk the East part. Yuki had been in Amsterdam for 4 days, but she hadn’t been in the East part, so she didn’t mind to walk with me. We went to the flea market, which was too early that only few stands opened. We still had the chance to buy an apple, a very big apple that cost only 0.30 Euro, the cheapest apple I have ever had from this trip. I saw a cool public art there. These are real jeans, only being hardened and colored. I wonder if we could sit on top of them ^.^

It’s only 10 o’clock while we finished walking through the market. I decided to try to find that big Green Snail, a work of Renzo Piano, that I saw last night. So we walked towards North. We walked along canals, took some pictures. She took me to the China town, a place where I saw African guys standing on the road more than Chinese. Yuki said we better off the road, because she saw a black guy who tried to flirt around pulled a girl’s hand. So we took another road, which turned out to be the Red Lights District. It was very different in the daylight … there’re still few businesses going on, but only by old women … wonder who needs such a ‘thing’ as breakfast ^.^

Watergate – Amsterdam’s symbol

Stopera

A temple in China Town

We reached Central Station an hour later. Far a field … squeezing my eyes … I saw the Snail! It’s very far though, but Yuki said, “why not try to reach it?” So we walked again, it’s getting bigger and bigger, but I decided that we wouldn’t have enough time to go back. Taking pictures from far could satisfy me for a while. “Next time”, I said to myself. We rushing back to the meeting point. On the say she still had enough time to take me to a money exchange, the one which didn’t ask any commission fee … that’s the different of having a partner who studies in Economy ^.^ Thanks Yuki that she knows quite well how to take short cut; we arrived 5 minutes before the bus moved.

Passing Rotterdam, I saw lots of new modern buildings a long the highway. Craig is a professional driver, drive right under the speed limit … while my camera’s speed is half of it. Really hope that I can jump off the bus for taking pictures.

German is our next stop. It’s quite easy to notice while we were leaving Holland, I saw less and less bicycles, more and more German’s roofs ^.^ We drove to St. Goar for the dinner; such a beautiful calm place, with Rhine Valley, Teddy bear’s birth place, Beer stein original factory, and world biggest Cuckoo clock as its background.

Although it claims as the original place, but none of those price are cheap … at least not for me. Maybe because of each item is limited production. They even have a Beer stein that talked about Berlin wall, with small pieces of the wall … who knows how to prove that ^.^