Hello! Sorry for the lack of updating in the past week or two, I've been pretty busy. (I know I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking about the Albaicin, a part of Granada. I'm going to detour from that briefly and talk about my recent trip.) My month long intensive course had a final, and the next day I left for Greece with a group of friends. These next couple of posts will certainly be about the time spent in Greece, as well as our travels, which were very long (but totally enjoyable). Let's start with our layover, of 10 (ten) hours! in Amsterdam.

Arriving in Amsterdam around 11pm local time. The airport was quite empty. We began to look around for a place to sleep seeing as we had a long wait before boarding another plane.

All of our flights were through the Royal Dutch airline, KLM. This is a giant wall poster in Amsterdam I saw after we exited our plane. I would recommend KLM to anyone - the food was abundant and pretty decent, the crew was incredibly nice, the flights were nearly all on time. The flight attendants wear these throw back bright blue suits, which I found a little odd, but cool. During the emergency instructions, all the flight attendants demonstrate the procedure. Very old fashioned, very enjoyable.

We finally find a set of (somewhat) comfortable couches to rest on. I took this trip with 4 friends I have met since being on this trip, 2 guys and 2 girls. When we arrived at the couches, the girls mentioned they wanted to sleep, but the three of us guys decided that you don't go to Amsterdam everyday, so we decided to explore the city. At midnight. We began heading for the metro, attached to the airport.

I don't really get the name of this bar either.

Note the emptiness, the cleanliness, and the coolness. I know it's a bit weird to be mentioning how cool this airport was, but it really was nice. It was a pleasure to stop here.

We took the train out of the Schiphol airport to central Amsterdam. The train too was mostly empty, about 2 euros and very quick. Our goals for the evening were pretty simple: to get a couple of drinks, see what there is to see, and head back with enough time to get a bit of rest. Pictured is my friend Chet as we meander towards the nearest watering hole.

One thing to note - bikes here are plentiful. This is just a small example of how many bikes this city had. Wherever there is railing  in this city, we saw bikes. We probably saw as many people biking at midnight as we saw cars. Take note America!

The first street we turned down. The river down the middle is an interesting touch. This area felt cozy. Again, note the bikes. 

Molly Malone's, the first bar we came across that looked decent. An Irish bar nonetheless. The bartender had a thick Irish accent and mentioned that they were closing in about 15 minutes. We all ordered a pint of something (can't remember) and I took a few more photos.

Don't worry, this advice doesn't really apply anyway... they all ride bikes!

The bar closed, so we continued walking. Swans!

Continuing on walking, a big intersection here.

Around here we stopped by another bar called San Francisco. Pretty crowded, and beers/shots were 5euros a pop (which, compared to Granada, is expensive). Fun crowd in here.

We finished our beers, and being as it was pretty late, we began walking back to the train station (above). It was about 4am at this point.

Chet, Jason and I in front of the central Amsterdam train station.

At this point we had an interesting encounter. We entered the train station about bought our tickets, but learned that our train would not be arriving for 45 more minutes. We headed back from the platform to make sure with the ticket guy that it for sure wasn't arriving for 45 more minutes. Before we could get there, we ran into 3 mostly intoxicated dutch girls. And because it isn't the US, of course they know another language in addition to Dutch (English). At first, they were fun to talk to, and we were able to discuss things in a civil fashion. Later, one of the three girls (who had been talking to someone else) walked over and began making fun of us for no reason. It got somewhat awkward. They ended up being on our train. One of them passed out (thankfully) but the other two kept talking. One was being fair, and we had a decent conversation about how we wish we could learn a language from baby. The other...she just kept making fun of us. She called my friend Jason "Orangesicle" because of his orangish goatee, but she couldn't pronounce it perfectly. And that is how Jason obtained the nickname "Orangeschnickel."

Back at the airport.

Way more crowded than when we left. 

The couches we found to sleep. We thought they'd be pretty comfy, but in reality they were really difficult to sleep in. Combine that with the amount of people now nearby, and the music playing in the nearby sandwich shop, and the cold air blowing out of the vents above - it didn't make for a great nights sleep. 

I'm going to pause here for now, but stay tuned for quicker updates, as I'd like to update 2 more times in the next couple of days.