The Worst Bike in Amsterdam

So I went to Amsterdam last weekend to visit my friend Ella who has just finished up her exchange over there. I came back with a whole extra bag of stuff that she gave me in an effort to clear out her room - win for me! It was really nice to catch up with her and spending that four days there really reminded me that even though I generally ony see her once every 6 months or so, her friendship is still really important to me. It's nice to know that dispite long periods of time and distance genuine friendships still flourish.

I did a fair bit of museum and gallery hoping in A'dam, much to the horror of my wallet. Every museum had an entry charge which was suprising coming from Perth were it's all pretty much free entry or a small fee for special exhibitions. Anyway, in Amsterdam I went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was really, really good. Info next to every painting, a whole floor dedicated to artists that were influential to him and then another floor all about the restoration of his works where you could see infrared an x-ray scans showing the different layers of his paintings. I went to Rembrandt house too. And the Anne Frank Huis, which was good but since a lot of it had been restored to the point of looking new I had a bit of trouble kind of... connecting with the space in the way I feel I should have. One bit that did get me was a section of wall that has been preserved by a glass box where Anne and her sister had kept track of their heights, and they were both around my height.

Anyway, Amsterdam is super pretty, so you should all see pictures of Ella and I being tourists...

There are so many bikes in Amsterdam! I was so keen to buy a bike when I got back to London, and I'm still looking now but I'll admit my entusiasm has waned since coming back and noticing London isn't as bike-friendly as Holland.

Swan on the canal! I died!

There was an ice-skating rink at Museumplein so we went and mucked around in the snow that had collected around the edge:

We sorta got chased out by a kid throwing snowballst us, haha.

I'm back in London now. I've booked a trip to Cambridge for this weekend, which is part of orientation at uni here. And I also bought tickets to see The Black Keys in February, which was a little above my budget but I'm excited and glad I'm going nonetheless. I've settled into my new flat, my landlord is lovely and I'm starting to get my room in order:

My orientation starts on the 20th (not the18th, sorry Gyps!) and then uni starts officially next week sometime, around the 25th I think.

Much love!

-Cathryn.

Ps. The story behind the title of this post: on my first morning in Amsterdam, Ella and I were walking to her uni and this guy came up to us with this incredibly shabby, brown bike that looked like it was about to fall apart and tried to sell it to us. Over the next few days I saw A LOT of bikes around Amsterdam and have since concluded that the bike he was trying to sell us was perhaps the worst bike in the whole of Amsterdam. I am so funny sometimes! (Not.)