Hi! (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡
Living in Europe has many perks, for example, you can get to a lot of places relatively cheaply by bus. This is a lifesaver for everyone who hates flying, like me. The biggest companies are Flixbus and RegioJet, at least in Czech republic.
I don´t know if I should thank Beyonce or their rivality, but RegioJet is known to be cheaper and have a lot of sales, on Halloween, Christmas and on Valentine´s day. This year they had 1+1 free ticket for the lover´s day, so of course, I called my sister.
It´s not like you could do this for every destination. There was Paris, Munich, London, Rome, ... luckily, we knew exactly where we wanted to go. For the longest time, I have wanted to see Amsterdam. I was even supossed to go there at least thrice, but destiny always decided otherwise.
My sister had only one failed attempt to get there, and that was only three months ago at the time. We originally wanted to go there between Christmas and New Year, which turned out to be too expensive.
It´s not like the city got any cheaper, even with two free tickets, so we decided to spend only one night there, and because the buses didn´t have the best arrival times, it was between 14:00 and 14:00.
Or was it?
We departed from Prague at 23:00. We live nowhere near our beautiful capital, so we arrived few hours sooner (just in case) and went to my favourite bar, Al Capone. Their drinks are filled with cheap alcohol, and there are almost no free chairs, but that place is so cheap, and you can choose from at least 50 cocktails. And the atmosphere is something else.
Then we had a looong walk to Florenc, my least favourite bus stop in Prague, because we hoped it´s going to help us sleep better. And because we didn´t want to waste precious money on public transport.
I slept terribly anyway. My body is more or less used to sleeping in bus, but it still strugles sometimes. It was during those dark hours that I realised oh no, we are already late.
Our plan was very tight, as you can imagine, and both me and my sister were rather bummed. I know, I know, this is what you have to expect when traveling on land. Still, we were both tired and hungry, and in a new city: We headed towards our hotel, or, to be precise, botel.
We spent our journey there joking about it not being there. I suspected that if that was the case, Denda would probably drown me. Luckily, the boat was there, exactly where it should be, with it´s tiny cabin. My sister couldn´t resist the need to film it.
We shared both toilette and bathroom with other guests, but there was a free breakfast, so we were rather excited for that.
Our first real stop was the Mouse Mansion. Both of us were dying from hunger, but we decided to stick to the itinerary and the itinerary said that we are gona eat later. That may be the reason for cleverness of our conversation, all we could talk about was how beatiful Amsterdam is. We were, and still are truly charmed.
When you close your eyes and think of Amsterdam, you probably see brick buildings and canals. This was exactly our experience and I loved it. I didn´t expect everything to look so pictoresque, but it did.
Mouse Mansion was so cute. It was a giftshop more than anything else, but it has such a cute exhibition with plush mouses just living their lives... when I first heard about this stop, I thought it´s gonna be about the comics, Maus. There couldn´t be greater difference.
After this, we wanted to go Tony´s Chocolonely. As you may have noticed, we don´t care about something being a tourist trap. We want to have a good time and if good time means no locals and a lot of fellow tourists, so be it. Vice versa can be applied too.
What we were not prepared for was the queue. We decided to ditch this stop and go to the next, Van Stapele. We have been salivating over their cookies for a few weeks at this point. Cut to us, seeing another queue.
So off we went, hungrier by every minute. It´s not even like anything stopped us from eating something else.
Next was Ripley´s Believe it or Not. We grew up on the show, so we wanted to see this place. At first, it seemed expensive, but it was worth every penny. Not just because it has four floors, I think, with interesting exhibits, but also because my sister got scammed on every corner.
For example, silent disco booth. Denda has this habit of spending money on the dumbest things, Of course, when she saw the booth where you could pick any song, dance a little and no one could see you, she was delighted.
First, she accidentally picked a terrible song neither of us knew, then we got stuck and then we found that that actually, you could see everything from outside.
At least we got our coolest photo.
This museum offers a nice mix of gross and interesting. There was a necklace from human teeth, figurines and stories of strange animals, such a calf with eight legs, vampire hunter´s kit and Maddona´s panties, and many, many more. It was definitely worth it.
My favourite moment was the yelling booth. It was probably not named like this, but you were supossed to scream there to see how loud you can get. My sister went in, I stayed outside. We could see each other through door, so we were able to commnicate with signs. I understood that she wanted to know if I can hear talking, and I truly couldn´t, up until the moment she started yelling. It was quiet, but loud enough to be heard all around to booth, and she looked so pathetic while screaming from the top of her lungs. I almost died of laugher.
After this, we headed towards Chinatown, but we had to get fries on our way there. Originally, we wanted to go to Fabel Friet, but we found this window with way better prices. It was right next to the church, so we could admire the architecture while waiting.
At this moment, we had only three stops left - Chinatown, Red Lights Museum, and OBA, a library with beautiful view. Since it was already dark, and OBA was right next to our boat, we decided to move it to the second day.
We enjoyed fries quite a lot - I´m not sure if it´s just some trend, but they had truffle mayo everywhere in the city, and it was so delicious.
Then we saw FEBO. It´s a franchize with cheap local variations of fast food, kept hot and fresh in vending machines. We had to try it, not just because of the price, but also because we saw some of the meals for the first time.
We got Frikadel (later I found out it´s related to carbanates) and possibly the best fried cheese-based food (I have forgotten the name since :() we ever tried. The meals were delicious, even for the price and the fact they were in glorified vending machine. And we didn´t have to speak to anyone.
Next time we are in Amsterdam, I think we will eat in FEBO everyday.
After this, we went to Chinatown. I´m pretty sure I always say this, but I LOVE Chinatowns. I was sooo excited when I found an apartment in one during my Erasmus. The one in Amsterdam is quite small, but great and full of restaurants and cool shops nonetheless.
As the dawn fell the city got even prettier. It´s already an architectonic wonder - with all the matching houses, the canals going around them and so many interesting people. Now there were lights too, all of them radiating warmth.
Even thought the streets looked wonderful, we didn´t pick the best time to visit Red Lights District. There were a lot of tourists, but also costumers and they made us feel a little bit missplaced. We went to
Red Light District Museum anyway. It tackled not only history of prostitution, but also it´s bussiness side and day to day life of prostitutes. There were many walls with their thoughts and stories - some heartbreaking, some almost inspiring.
My favourite part was wall filled with confessions, both from customers and workers. I wish I actually remembered some of them, but I guess you will have to see them yourself.
After this, we were rather tired, still from the bus, so we just got some (rather overpriced) stroopwaffels. They were so good we remembered that local McDonalds had a stroopwaffel ice cream, so we got our last bit of strenght together and went to the closest one.
It´s just a McDonalds, but the ice cream was so good! I feel like you can never go wrong with caramel.
After this, we went to Carrefour for water (both of us view grocery stores as a cultural monuments, therefor love them while abroad) and off to our sleep we went.
The boat was rocking on the water, camly sending us to sleep even faster.
I swear to god, we wanted to wake-up to see the sunset over the city, but we were just too tired. Instead, we woke up around 7:00, quickly dressed up and went to breakfast. Since it was in the price of our botel, we decided to fill ourselves. There were pancaces (unusually thick ones), mapel syrup, some local bread, very strange peanut butter, ... we knew that we had a lot of foodstops that day, Amsterdam is a foodie heaven after all, but that didn´t stop us.
We went there first, but the small kitchen of Vita Nova quickly filled with other guests. It was interesting to hear all the conversations in so many languages.
It rained outside a little bit.
We wanted to take a photo with the skyline together. We weren´t successful.
Our first stop was OBA library, with beautiful view over city. Someohow, we didn´t take pictures. The only downside was that since it was so high, and we tried to get there by escalators, it took us forever.
It was wort it, though, as you could see if we didn´t have one collective braincell and took a picture.
Then we were supossed to go to Vondelpark, walk throught it, see the giant Miffy statue nearby and then take a look at Rijksmuseum at least from outside, but due to the time it would take we had to skip it. Next was Jordaan, with it´s bohemian atmosphere and many little museums. We enjoyed this walk, not just because of the beautiful scenery, but also because we knew what was at the end of it.
Saint-Jean. A bakery. A brand. An amazing snack.
Both of us got pistachio cruffin. Normally, we would both get something else and share it, but both of us wanted this one, and was well-founded. This little thing was full of flavour, actually tasted like pistachio and it was just so filling we couldn´t finish it in one sitting. I was still looking for almost pain au chocolate, one of my many obsession, still with no luck, but this made me at least thing of other baked goods.
After Jordaan, we went to see the Negen Straatjes, supossedly famous pictoresque streets filled with boutiques. As we wondered throught them, we realised we still didn´t have any souvenirs.
We knew what we wanted, mostly food and drinks, and we saw all of the ideal options in Carrefour day before, plus some magnets, but that´s the funny part. Non of the other shops had the stroopwaffel bear we wanted to get our dad, the Monster we don´t have in Czechia that our bestie wanted to try or the cheap stroopwaffels packages :). By the end, we got most of of our gifts near bus station, and we still didn´t get enough, because later we regreted not getting some waffels just for us, too.
We made our way throught the streets. Sadly, we didn´t have time to go throught all the shops, so we continued to Oersoep tunnel.
It´s a beautiful passage decorated with sea motives. We really felt like part of another world there. It felt quite luxurious.
Nearby was Van Stapele, the cookie shop we skipped the day before. The line wasn´t too long this time and we were really curious, so we sacrificed some time.
It was worth it. The cookies are milk chocolate, generously filled with white chocolate, and baked right in front of costumers. It would probably make for very stressfull part time, but it also made wonderful piece of dough. I don´t think I have ever had better cookie.
By this time, it was already 11:00 and we didn´t have anough time for both of our next stops, Albert Cuypstraat and Foodhallen. Between the streetmarket and foodmarket, the one with food won.
We really are pittless when it comes to food.
We had to walk for 40 minutes to get there, but at least we got out of the city centre. It was still charming, even in the more industrial parts of town.
Some people may advise againist visiting Foodhallen, but was worth it for us. It was definitelly overwhelming - there are a lot of food stalls, not a lof of space between them, and a lot of people. (Duh, we came there during the lunch hours.) At the same time, it was full of scents, colours and food options that I have hardly seen before. For a small town kids it was a heaven.
There are more parts of the Hallen, some with boutiques, some with market, but we wanted to try another piece of local cuisine. That why we got bitterballen with truffle mayo and dim sums of many flavours.
For some reason, both of us craved them, even if they are not strictly Dutch.
We ate them rather quickly, as we still didn´t have souvenirs and our bus was leaving in only about an hour. Both dim sum and bitterballen were very tasty. Bitterballen were way more creamy than we expected. Non of us like meat that much, so it was a pleasant surprise. We left the place very happy.
As we were walking towards bus stop, I noticed a bakery. I didn´t have any luck with my almost obsession before, but something told me thiw will be different.
It was. They had an amazing almond pain au chocolat. I really wish I could recall it´s name, but I can´t even find it on maps. It was this millenial looking place near our stop, but that applies to majority of nearby cafes and bakeries.
What I like about almond pain au chocolate is the variety. In France, they were usually a little flat and had this slightly burned taste that made me go crazy. In London, I had one one that was fluffy to a crazy degree and had an almond paste with the chocolate filling.
This one was giant, fluffy, and full of chocolate.
Even thought both of us had great time during our stay, we still had some stress ahead for us. It was because we had to buy gifts right before we left (that was a success, thanks to nearby Carrefour), but because we had no idea where we should wait for our bus.
Sloterdijk station is rather big, and even if you find the part specifically for buses, there is not guarantee that you will find yours.
We had run to get to our RegioJet. I don´t think our bodies were prepared for such a rush of adrenaline after all the food we ate during the day. Luckily we had enought time to calm down - we were supossed to get out of bus at 4 AM tomorrow.
You may wonder, with such a long journey, there had to be some stops at least for toilettes. No. There was one toilette in bus and if you didn´t like that, you just have to accept your fate of not peeing for few hours.
I´m not a fan of this. I don´t mind the bus toilette, but I still think it would be better to make some stops.
There was also a coffeemaker. One was at our first bus, too, but it was broken, so all I got was a hot water :(.
This time, I got us hot chocolate and cafe late, both of which proved little problematic due to my previous lament. How I said, I had no problem going to the little bus WC, but Denda did, so she had to suffer for 16 hours.
This time, we got to Prague on time. The main station was luckily open, se we could wait there for our train, with other passengers, and the fact that since we went with RegioJet even back to our home, we could go to Regio Lounge just an hours later. We were especially excited for the free ice cream.
Little did we know, the machine was broken.
Our journey ended here, but it left us with love for Amsterdam and a burning need to see more of it. It also left me with a lot of coursework, since I left during busiest day of my college week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Have you ever been to Netherlands? And do you enjoy traveling by bus?
See you soon! ／(^ x ^)＼
