Our Final day:
To truly begin my own experience on our final day in Amsterdam, we have to start early, around 12am to be precise. Whilst most peoples days begin with a beautiful golden ray of light showering on their face, or even the sweet aroma of your mothers homemade pancakes, flooding the room (and surrounding areas) with sweetness and delight. Mine began with an unhealthy amount of Jaffa cakes, pizza, and a Whoopi Goldberg movie from the 80s. Dubbed in the easy to understand Dutch language, and all the while I was laying in a pile of crumbs, chocolate, and a healthy amount of self loathing. Despite all these wonderful things at around 12:30am, of one of the most wonderful mornings of my life I decided to give in to sleeps wonderful clutches. The same morning at 6:30am I awoke to the sound of my alarm buzzing into the depths of my ear canal. After about five minutes of the most intense test of will I have ever experienced, I mustered the courage, got up, and turned it off, and went back to sleep. At which point the alarm of my roommate went off and I walked to the bathroom, to proceed with doing what most normal people do with acquiesce on a typical morning at around 6:35. At 7 in the morning I made my way down to the hotel eating area and ate a wonderful breakfast of bread and ham, as I sat there munching on my sandwich I thought "perhaps this is why I never heard about famous Dutch breakfast food prior to my travels" An interesting thought indeed. After my breakfast bread and ham we all filed on to the bus for another delightful drive around the city of Amsterdam. Our destination; the docks for another tour, but this time on a boat (It should be made clear that the last portion of that sentence should be said in the tone of someone who's really really trying to sell the experience) The boat tour itself wasn't bad, as in truth everyone was either, listening to music or asleep, and in some cases both at the same time. It was really quite impressive - That being when I myself wasn't asleep- Afterwords we went to yet another national museum although, the artifacts were varying and at times quite interesting, I found myself too infatuated with the fun museum tasks that Phoebe had created for us. So whilst everyone was admiring a beautiful piece of Flemish art I was running around like a madman looking for a statue that mildly resembled me. That isn't even to mention the lovely interactions I had with the local children, who I believe were trying to interact with us by use of hand signals, shame that the only signals they New was the middle finger and gang signs, but I suppose any interaction with locals is good interaction. Promptly afterwords, we were treated to a lovely 10 minute lunch free for all in a local grocery shop. This little experience consisted of several happy campers distraught about the fact that this Grocery chain didn't accept Visa or MasterCard, myself and all the confused local Dutch people were delighted to watch the chaos that ensued. However it wasn't entirely good for me as my final 5 euros bought a delicious local dish, that I believe is called "Two soggy frozen hot dogs" We all got to enjoy our local delicacies in a nice park. To continue, after my delicious local meal we ventured to the Van Gogh museum. I'm sure it was lovely, the reason I say that was because I was much too focused on writing this little epic of mine. After the Van Gogh museum we hopped back on the bus, and it became immediately clear to me; the youth of today might seriously have an addiction to phones, as despite being in a city of extremely impressive architecture and beautiful canal ways with a myriad of boats and people, despite that, I was still writing on my phone. After this short bus ride we had dinner in an Australian place, and what we had to actually eat. Was Curry (I know it shocked me too) strangely though, this Australian curry -Did I mention we were in the Netherlands- Was not spicy, and was actually quite sweet. After this initial shock I ate all of it in about 2 mins, one reason being out of all the Dutch food we had this wasn't the worst in my opinion. Another reason was that they had really good music and I wished to finish my food before the end of "Don't Stop Me Now" By Queen to ensure I can have maximum jam time with the song, obviously my priorities were in order. After our pretty good sweet curry we ventured to a little street to spend a little less than an hour milling about looking for something to waste our parents money on. Before we were set free one of our chaperones told us not to cross the road at the end of the street, due to the fact that it was dangerous, I however assumed it was because the red light district was just over the road (It was not). Upon walking around it became apparent the only thing open were just shops that sold souvenirs. To continue after we left the area we headed back to the hotel, whilst sitting upon my bed I lay thinking. Not about the strange people and strange things that I saw, but I thought about my experience overall the journey I took with my friends to Europe. How I got to show them where I was
From, my country, and my home. Even places I'd never been before. Despite the rough times when we were just sick of each other, and tired of walking around, at the end of the day it was worth it, and I wouldn't trade the memories made with my friends for the world.
-Cameron
