Den Haag + Amsterdam + Daniela = awesome weekend ever!

By now my most loyal readers (Daniela) know that my abroad program spends as little time as humanly possible in Brussels and instead we go to a million other places. This past weekend, we got to go to Den Haag (the Hague for non Dutch speaking folks) home of the International Criminal Court, Eurojust, Royal Palace and other wicked cool and awesome stuff. After that we headed over to Amsterdam for the weekend because what's a visit to the Netherlands without a visit to Amsterdam?



To commence then, on Wednesday we left Brussels via the 18:22 train to Den Haag were I had a jolly good time on the train laughing it up with Becca, Ben and Adrienne (and Flo for the 10 minutes she was there). Once we arrived to Den Haag two hours later, we were greeted by Jerry who took us to our hotel (we got off at Gravenstraat...that's right ppl i remember). We put our belongings down and headed out to see the locals. However, the locals won cause we were wicked tired and called it an early night.

Next morning we headed to the ICC and had two speakers tell us all about it and current cases they are working on. I t was totally awesome as well as a tour of one of the court rooms. It was totally legit although here's some advice... try to not end up here (unless you're a kick ass lawyer). Anyway then we had lunch and then back to the same building where we had a meeting with Eurojust. Again super awesome to see the institutions we read about in practice and hear from the professionals. That evening we again stayed up chatted and tried to interact with the locals but they won again.

On Friday we bested the awful weather and made it to the Netherlands Defense College for a lecture on...you guessed it defense and then lunch followed by a Jerry Tour....which was AWESOME as usual. Some of the highlights include the Royal Palace, seeing some embassies and learning where the prime minister lives (its nice let me tell you). Later we rendez-vous over to the OPCW for a lecture on chemical weapons and as soon as that was over it was officially the weekend and that meant...AMSTERDAM!!!!



By super awesome timing Daniela arrived at the train station at the same time as we did so after several months of not seeing each other we did and it was VERY EXCITING! I think we scared some of my Brussels peeps by our hugging...oh well. We all located our bus and headed our to Hotel Slotania (laugh here....go ahead) and promptly headed out once more! Becca, Ben Daniela and I made our way to Leidseplein (Led Zeppelin lol) the cool bar scene in Amsterdam to await the arrival of everyone else... I would say good bonding tome for all involved. Later, the four of us found this bar/club called News Cafe where we parked it for the rest of the night and had an AWESOME TIME!!!! We really did... more bonding and dancing and singing but especially bonding!

The next day the original four walked over to Central Station (took us two hours) to go on our walking tour.... we did lots of walking. On the way Daniela and I were able to catch up on lots of things...it was so much fun! Later we grabbed some lunch and met up with several other Brussels ppl for the walking tour which started at Dam Square. Tour took us through the the important Amsterdam sites including the Red Light District (yes I did see ladies in windows), occult churches, several "coffeeshops", the old Jewish Quarter, Rembrandt's casa, and lots and lots of canals. It was awesome and very educational (see even on our time off we get educated). Our last stop was the Anne Frank House were 4 + Erin stepped inside to visit the annex.... Completely worth it.

Sunday morning Daniela, Autumn and I rose early and headed to the Van Gogh Museum which was very interesting. I learned a lot about him. We later chilled at Museumplein (park right next to Van Gogh) for several hours before it was time for Autumn and I to head back to Brussels. Daniela dropped us off and I cried a little (I hate good-byes...even if they are see you laters) and off we went. Autumn and I chatted for a bit before falling asleep and when we woke we were home in Brussels once again.