Travel Thursday is an idea a number of us discussed on Twitter and our friend Ian put together the prompts. You can find the prompts and join in by taking a look at Ian’s blog.
Travel Thursday: Your all-time favourite place visited
Well, this was kinda answered yesterday in not very much detail. I think my favourite place would either be Izmir in Turkey or Amsterdam in Holland.
As discussed yesterday in Wee Bit Wednesday by best two holidays have been going to Turkey and Amsterdam.
Well, in a way Turkey was a working holiday rather than a proper holiday. Therefore, I thought I’d talk more about Amsterdam which was a holiday.
So back in May 2007, Chris and I went to Amsterdam for our honeymoon. We got the train to Harwich Ferry Port. The ferry took around 9 hours and we landed in Hoek Van Holland. It’s on the west coast of Holland.
We then caught the train from Hoek Van Holland to Amsterdam. We went via Rotterdam on both the outgoing and incoming trips. On the return trip, we actually changed trains at Rotterdam – I think we’d got time for a little explore but realised once we were off the train that we didn’t know what to go and see. We got the train into Amsterdam Centraal – this is the main train station and I think it’s on its own island in the middle of the river.
While we were in Amsterdam, we used the tram system to get pretty much everywhere (if we weren’t on trams we were walking lol.) It’s just as easy than the London Underground. The hotel we were staying in was around 5 minutes from the nearest stop. Our nearest stop was also the stop for the Rijksmuseum. The great thing about this location was that we were also just around the corner from Vondelpark. I think it’s Amsterdam’s answer to Central Park in New York or Regent’s Park in London. In the park, there was this big sculpture at the end of the pond.
Although when Chris said we were going to Amsterdam I was like “What is there to do other than look at windmills, flowers and clogs?”. I really enjoyed it and would actually really like to go back one day.
What I hadn’t realised before going to Amsterdam, was that I was going to somewhere that was really quite historic in a sense. We went to look at the AnneFrankHuis which is in Prisengracht which is a busy street near the Olde Kirk. We wanted to go and have a look but the queue was so long that we really needed to be there a few hours before it opened. We found the thinnest house in Amsterdam (apparently this might actually be no longer correct as another building comes up when you look it up on Google).
We’d been very carefully avoiding certain streets, I’d seen a poster about a Journalism Photography exhibition that would take us right through the bit that.
I thought I’d written about my time in Amsterdam but having had a look I didn’t write about it which seems really strange. So this is probably the longest post I’ve written about Amsterdam lol.
Prompt from Ian’s Blog here. You can also read Rickie’s response here.
Amsterdam is great, went for work a couple of times, but finally managed a fun visit two years ago with friends. Very relaxed and enjoyable city, excellent for just strolling around, which is what I love on a city holiday. The “certain streets” were not an attraction for us as such, but we did feel we would have missed out on part of the “Amsterdam experience” if we didn’t head that way at all. Feelings mainly alternated between embarrassment and bewilderment I think. Mainly it was just funny, as that was the way we approached it. We found a great pub that may appear in a future Travel Thursday!
We were walking through to the photography show – I was pretty much staring at my shoes and hadn’t noticed most of what was going on around me until I saw something in the corner of my mind and was like “Huh?” then “OH DEAR! EUGH EUGH! PUT SOME CLOTHES ON” it was graphic and went back to staring at my shoes lol. Hence why we tried to avoid those streets lol. I guess we did miss out on some experiences but at the same time it was too much for my brain lol.
It is so bizarre to have that kind of thing just around the corner from normal city streets. And a shame that’s what the city is known for rather than just being a great place to visit. I would like to go back and spend a bit more time there at some stage. Very different places, but interesting that we both chose honeymoons as our “best place”!
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