Self Portrait with Straw Hat -Day 59-March 9th, 2018

Today was another early morning and I got up around 4:45. My flight wasn’t until 9:55, but the only bus that would get me to the airport on time was at 6:05. The other one was a little later and would be too risky.

One coffee and two to bus rides later, I was at the Grenoble bus station. The bus was there already and I enjoyed a nice hour long ride to the airport. It was still dark out, so I used this opportunity to catch some Zs.

The bus brought me to the train station, so I had to walk for about 10 minutes to the airport terminal.

Nothing like watching a sunrise from the airport security line

I got through security quickly and had a good two hours to kill. I used this time to type up my blog from the night before. Eventually it was time to board and I made it to the gate. On the way over, I bough a bottle of French wine to bring my friends at the duty free store.

I was planning just watching Black Mirror on my phone, but I ended up just talking to the guy next to me for the whole flight. His name was Brett and he was an American also studying in Grenoble. He went to University of Florida and we spent the hour and a half flight talking about Grenoble, frats and a variety of other topics.

Once we landed in Amsterdam, Brett and I took the train together to the Amsterdam central station. By chance we ended sitting with these two American girls from Lyon. I guess going to Amsterdam as an American study abroad student must be super common. Once we got to the station, I parted ways with my new friends and went to find my old ones in Amsterdam.

I had a twenty minute walk before I arrived in some square near the Airbnb. My friend Mats called me on the phone and said they could see me. I did a 360 looking spring the square and spotted them in the 2nd story window of some breakfast place.

I met them inside and we were all very excited to see each other. They just had to pay the bill and than we headed to the bike shop. They had rented theirs already, but I still needed to get mine. I did a 24 hour rental on one of the pedal but bikes. I was glad to be back in Amsterdam and even happier to see my BU friends Jared, Mats, Megan and Julien.

We got back to the Airbnb and just spent a lot of time just catching up on things. Everyone wanted to know so much about my time in France so far. I was surprised to learn some of them were keeping up with my blog (S/O Jared) frequently too.

Before I arrived in Amsterdam, they told me the Airbnb was a little sketchy, but I figured it couldn’t be too bad after staying in so many hostels.

I’m not usually the type to complain about these things, but the apartment was pretty gross. Having less nice furniture is one thing, but the overall cleanliness was pretty low here as well. We all opted to make the best of it either way.

After hanging out for a bit, we wanted to bike around the city. Our first destination was the I Am Amsterdam sign. Followers of my blog and Instagram will recall I was here a few weeks ago.

Here’s a picture with my friends at the sign

I really wanted to top my stupidity from last time at the sign ( I climbed on top of the “I”) and my friends egged me on even further. I climbed on top of the letters and ran across them trying to get in as many people’s photos as possible.

It worked extremely well.

Here’s an action shot from this.

Afterwards we headed to the Van Gogh museum, which I wanted to do last time but didn’t get the chance. The museum was awesome and I really felt like I left with a better understanding of his art and life.

All the paintings were arranged in the order they were made and had great descriptions. It really seemed like each painting had a cool story or theme behind it.

Here’s some of my favorites from the museum (including Mats)

All the self-portraits were awesome because he used them as a way to test our different artistic styles and brush strokes. There were a bunch of paintings that looked nothing like his style of art. It was incredible to see in person.

After the museum we wanted to sit for a bit and found a nice cafe/bar. I had a pint and we played a bunch of pool.

 

Pool featuring Julien

After sitting for a bit, we got hungry and searched for a place to eat dinner. I don’t quite remember the name of the restaurant, but it was pretty decent burger place. I got a milkshake with a burger and fries. It was no shake shack, but definitely hit the spot.

After the Airbnb we headed back to apartment to hang out before going out. I also had bought a nice bottle of Dutch gin for my friends and we had some gin and tonics.

Despite not seeing my friends for a few months, it felt like barely any time had passed and we were just hanging out like we were in Boston.

We made plans to go to some club but mistakenly didn’t realize it was 21+. The drinking age is 18 in the Netherlands, so it’s hard to feel at fault for this one. Fortunately, there was a very nice bar next door that we went to. It was pretty fancy and had a nice atmosphere. I had good drink that was similar to a Moscow mule.

One of my friends from my fraternity also happened to be in Amsterdam with his girlfriend, so we planned to meet up at a bar. This is where we headed to next and we met Christian and his girlfriend Morgan at some bar I don’t recall the name of.

Jared wasn’t feeling great, so he went home with Mats and Julien. Megan and I stuck around with Christian and had a really nice time. I never have been that close to Christian in Boston, but we had some great conversations and I found myself really missing some fraternity stuff.

Christian and I documented our meetup to send to the Frat group chat of course.

Here’s the picture

 

We stayed at the bar for a while and then hopped to another one. I had some really good craft beer called a Funky Falcon. After a while we departed the bar and I said goodbye to Christian and Morgan.

I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed immediately. I’m not going to lie, I definitely drank a bit too much this night and wasn’t feeling amazing when I got back. I chugged a bunch of water, then plopped onto the couch and soon fell into a deep, alcohol-fueled slumber.

Jared took this photo of me sleeping in a really funny position.

 

It felt great to back with my BU friends again after such a fun day.