For Day 5, we finally explored the town of Amsterdam. And of course, Mother Nature decided to show up. So first thing was trying out tampons here in Europe. Interesting. At first I hated them, but after using them all day, they were out pretty great. So maybe I’ll have to start writing them in the US. We did have an earlier start to the day because we wanted to make it to the Norther Market, which was in Amsterdam. And it’s a market that happens on Saturday and Mondays. And so we went into town on Saturday. Now I’m thinking we made a mistake going on a Saturday, especially on a holiday weekend. It is their Liberation weekend that they’re celebrating. And so they honor those who lost their lives during World War 2. And it was a crazy day full of so many people. And I think that was the mistake of going when there were so many people there anyways. There were a ton of great vendors. This is the little noter market that I’m showing you here. I bought that little shirt from this company. There were a lot of vintage items, antique sellers, as well as like fresh produce. And so they had honey, they had all sorts of different kinds of vegetables, bread, cheese, milk. I mean, you name it, they had something there for everybody.
The Instagram girly and me could not resist buying a fresh bouquet of flowers, even though we’re only here for a couple of more days. I had to get myself a bouquet of flowers to take a picture on the bridge holding them in a cute little way. So anyways, there was a little video of that, but they had fresh bakery items. We got some brownies. We just had fun kind of exploring all the different vendors. I feel like we don’t necessarily have something like this where I live. So I was living for just walking around and trying different things and buying from some of the small businesses and vendors there. Also just kind of wanted to show you like some behind the scenes of walking. So you’ve got the canals with a whole bunch of like boat tours. You’ve got bikes everywhere you can think to put a bike, there’s a bike park there. When you’re crossing the street, you have to make sure you’re not getting hit by a car or a trolley or a train or a bike or a person. I mean, Saturday was just insane.
We did see the end Frank House. We didn’t have tickets to go inside and I’m sad that we missed out on that. However, we did find some lunch. We tried this famous chocolate cookie. It was pretty good. I’m not a huge chocolate fan, but it was good. We also found some Doctor Pepper and I was dying for a sip of Doctor Pepper to have a taste of home with me. So that was really yummy and I was excited that we felt nice.
Everybody says that Amsterdam is small and that you can explore it really fast but like this place is huge and there were so many people, so many shops, so many different streets and areas that I wanted to see. I feel like I needed a couple of days here, although the town of Amsterdam was not my favorite. However, shopping the Jordan on the 9th Street was my favorite. That was the video of those last two, 10 out of 10 recommend shopping there.
I spent quite a bit of money walking and shopping down the nine streets. On our way out, we passed the royal palace and then we got some little tourist. I got a little sweatshirt from there. And then I wanted to show you kind of both sides of the street where people get that aesthetic photo of the houses in the water. But then across the street, like there were thousands of people this weekend when we were there. So I just kind of wanted to show like what was across and then we back on rains and we headed for home. A storm was coming in so we try to make it down to the North Sea cuz we’re like 20 minutes from there. Ended up riding under a rain cloud the entire way down there. Got soaking wet. But I can officially say that I have been to the North Sea and I also put my toes in the water. So I have been in the North Sea now as well. We found some seashells. It was just me and my sister. We did a little bike ride down there. But overall, it was a chuck full day of Amsterdam as well as checking out the North Sea at night. And we had so much fun for tomorrow.