Amsterdam and Versailles

The next weekend was Amsterdam. I was really excited about this for a few reasons (in no particular order). 1) Queen's day (Koninginnedag). Basically, this is a huge party in the streets (and canals) with EVERYBODY wearing orange. 2) Last weekend of travel. 3) I got to visit Vincent again (my French roommate from sophomore year). 4) I'd get to see a couple of my friends who'd be there for the festival as well. The only thing I was kind of bummed about was because it is such a huge festival, I wouldn't get to see the real Amsterdam; rather, I would see the super crowded Amsterdam, which meant I couldn't see all the normal touristy things (i.e. museums, Anne Frank house, enjoy city without people everywhere, etc.). While this proved to be the case, it was still most definitely worth it. I would honestly go back there every year just for this festival - it was that good.

Friday, I met up with Bill, one of my friends from Georgia Tech and met a bunch of his friends. Friday night was Queen's night, so we did normal Queen's night activities... So Saturday was Queen's day. I don't know why they do it that way, but whatever. It was packed, as you will see below. There was stuff going on everywhere - it took us literally 10 minutes to walk about 100 yards in some places. Music, dancing, eating, drinking, people selling stuff in the streets, free concerts (one by Armin van Buuren, aka the #1 DJ in the world for the past 4 years), people partying on boats in the canals... you get the picture. It was great. And there was the incident with the Portuguese dude that talked a lot and the nice Russian guy. Anyway, the following day, we basically just relaxed, and on Monday, I returned to Metz to take my two finals on Tuesday and go to Paris on Tuesday night.

LOTS OF PEOPLE

Even at the concert...

So, in Amsterdam, bikes are a very important mode of transportation. How important, you ask? Well, you can easily get run over by bikers in the city. Don't believe me?

Finally, in the city, they had a bunch of random urinals. These are placed all over downtown. Apparently they used to have girl versions, but they don't anymore... [2014 update: couldn't find this picture to update]

Anyway, since my flight was on Thursday and I hadn't been to Versailles yet, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to go. The gardens are beautiful and both the palace and the gardens are ridiculously huge. You'll have to go there to fully appreciate what I mean. People get lost there. They have golf carts you can rent. That was basically it for the trip. Thursday morning, we took the train to CDG and flew home. One cool thing was that in the US Airways terminal at CDG airport, they had two PS3s for people to play while they're waiting for their flights. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this until 5 minutes before my flight boarded, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

This is the Château de Versailles. Bad picture, I know. But, in order to get all of it in one picture, I had to go this far back (and I still missed some of it). Unfortunately, there was random construction going on right in front..