I already owned up to the fact that I am bad at keeping a consistent blog post schedule last time, so I’m not going to apologize for the long period of silence 
You guys knew what you were getting into. I am who I am.
I was in (or near) Amsterdam for almost 4 weeks, from June 7 to July 2. To be exact, it was 26 days. By the end of it, I was starting to feel like a local! I was starting to get by with some Dutch, and I even have a vague idea of where things are. By the end of it, though I was excited for the next leg of my travels, I wished I didn’t have to leave. To the haters (EMJ) who thought almost a month was too long to stay in Amsterdam, you were wrong 
My original intention was to cram everything about Amsterdam into a single blog post. But, I realized, not even half-way through writing, there is no way. I need to break this out into multiple parts, not necessarily in timeline order. So, here’s the first part. TBD how many more parts to come.
Even though my stay was almost a month long, I am still not super familiar with all the neighborhood. In my defense, I did have to work full-time and had very little time to explore. I am, however, partial to “De Pijp” (pronounced “pipe”) neighborhood, which is a boujie spot with mostly locals living there. It is home of the Albert Cuyp Market, which is where I had my first herring sandwich and is right next to the Amstel river. The Albert Cuyp Market is also the longest street market in Europe, if my Airbnb host, Balthasar, is to be believed.
Note: the De Pijp flat had a total of 55 (very steep) steps from the ground floor to the flat itself. This is why the Dutch are so fit as a nation.
When R visited, we stayed in an eco-conscious hotel on the north-western tip of Vondelpark. It’s seriously amazing how many green spaces there are in this city. In addition to Vondelpark, there’s Westerpark, Rembrandt Park, and other random parks everywhere. And I love how, on a sunny day, the parks are absolutely filled to the brim with people. Some are in nothing but their bikinis developing a tan. Others have somehow hauled an entire picnic set, grill, along with their extended family, to the park for a cookout. Doesn’t seem impressive until you realize that most people here don’t have cars. That means they transported all this stuff and children with bicycles! Apparently pictures of cyclists balancing ridiculous items on their bicycles as they bike like fucking maniacs on the streets is a Dutch meme. One afternoon, as I was walking through Westerpark, I stumbled upon an open-mic event where a woman was doing a standup set on her experience dating as an American woman in the Netherlands. Because I can’t relay jokes to save my life, you will just have to take my word that she was hilarious.
My final week-ish in the Netherlands, I ventured away from the city and towards the west coast to a beach town called Zandvoort. Apparently, “Zandvoort” translates to “Sand Forth”, which is quite appropriate for a beach town. It was a beautiful spot, filled with old white people. Being the only young(ish) adult who’s not white and has blue hair, I stuck out like a sore thumb. However, the *vibes* of the beach and the friendliness of everyone made up for it. The only downside to living at the beach was that everything feels ever so slightly damp all the time…
In between moving from Airbnb #1 to a hotel to Airbnb #2, I tried to get as much exploring in as possible. What better way to get to know the city of bicycles than on my own two wheels? LOLOLOL I almost died and killed a few other cyclists along the way. Did you know that helmets are not legally required in Amsterdam?
I’m not sure how common bicycles with back-pedal brakes are in this city, but that was the first bike I got on for my city tour. So, not only am I rusty on a bike, but I had to learn a whole different way of braking, which one might argue is a critical action to master. And on top of all that, the bike was about 1 cm too tall for my stupid short legs. This was obviously a recipe for disaster, and yet, I lived! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What doesn’t kill the other cyclists on the road will live on to be a menace another day! In summary, I almost caused 3 road accidents. Did I mention how angry cyclists get when you are about to run into them head-on?
So, I did the city bike tour on a Saturday. After surviving the ordeal, my immediate reaction was, “cool, let’s do another, but with less people and more cows!” So, on Sunday, I went on a countryside bike tour with cheese and clogs. If you’d think that I’d have fewer incidents in the countryside, especially with a bike that has hand brakes, You’d be right! I only had 2 incidents of falling off the bike! This is what winning at life looks like.
And completely off topic, but it was on the countryside bike tour that I met a real-life Alex Nilsen. For those of you who have read “The People We Meet on Vacation” by Emily Henry, you’d get the reference. For the majority of you who haven’t, Alex Nilsen is the male love interest in the book. He was described as a hot but shy nerd who works out to manage his anxiety and has a hidden fun/weird side that only comes out when he’s with Poppy (the heroine of the book). Unfortunately, I have no idea what this real-life Alex’s actual name was, despite spending 4 hours with him on this tour, but he both looks and acts like this fictional Alex. All I know is that he is an Australian ER doctor who was in Amsterdam for a conference on emergency medicine. And that his friend (also an ER doc) is named Jon. I hope he has a Poppy in his life 
See ya in part 2!