Thursday, July 31, 2008

A little update although I wanted blog about the Paris trip which was more than a month a ago but there are a lot of pictures and will take quite some time. We went to Rotterdam last Saturday for the Summer Carnival and yes very pretty and colourful costumes. Also, my maiden experience in a casino! It's legal as long as you're above 18. Well, at first I exchanged 10 euros and lost all of it at the slot machine, which is not fun because three in a row doesn't seem to come out, followed by the roulette. So my 10 euros were gone just like that lol. But I decided to give it a go again at the roulette and exchanged another 10 euros (5 coins, 2 euros each) and inserted 3 coins into the machine and won back 6 coins overall (that's 12 euros, 24 sgd)! Therefore, I recouped my losses and won 2 euros hahha. Then on Monday, me and my grandma ventured out on our own to Leiden Central it's a shopping street actually. And finally, I went to explore Amsterdam Central on my own. Visited Anne Frank House despite the long queue and waited for an hour and a half! It's worth it though. Watched the Anne Frank: The Whole Story movie before visiting and the cast really look like the real people! No cameras allowed in the museum so no pics of the interior. When I read that the museum is really the actual house where the Frank and Van Pels families hid in during WW2, I had goosebumps which lasted for quite some time! Went to the secret annexe behind the bookcase too. Everything's well kept. Anne Frank was only 16 when she passed away and 1 month before liberation. Okay this sounds like some history lesson but it's really worth visitng! In the evening, I hopped onto a tram and went to the beach and so I was just taking pics of the surroundings and so on. When I got on the tram to go back and browsed through my pics, I realised one of my pics included a topless woman! Alas!

The very interesting and colourful costumes.

Gladiator!

Cute!

My aunt went to the middle to take this haha

This is funny!

Hahah this is the roulette where I won 2 euros!

Leiden Central on Monday with my grandma.

We ate at this random restaurant and the tea for 2 costs 6.5 euros! One dish here is enough for 2 ppl.

I took this pic somewhere around our neighbourhood and that's my aunt in her car by the way haha.

This is today, at Anne Frank House.

The super long queue!

And I'm finally in front to take a pic of the queue behind.

1929-1945

I didn't go into the Van Gogh museum and Rijksmuseum cuz they're all paintings and I'm so not an Art person so I dun think I can appreciate the them.

Buddha statues with peace sign at the entrance of the beach.

Okay this is it! I censored it off though!

I'll be back very soon and I kinda packed my luggage already it's quite overweight and so wun be able to bring more food stuff back! :( Oh my weight is still x plus 3 or 4! :(

Alright, miss me! <3

Posted by stranger at 12:56 AM

6 ticks

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Super Grand Holland Tour

Well that's the name of the tour we joined on 24/6/08. The meeting time was 930 in the morning at Amsterdam Central so it's another day of waking up early again. First stop was De Zaanse Schans, a picturesque windmill village followed by a visit to a local clogmaker in one of the houses.

So here we are.. three windmills in a row!

Souvenir shop. The prices were more expensive than in other shops.

Traditional clogs in different sizes.

This is the clogmaker it's really quite amazing to see how they are made. According to him, these clogs are worn by poor farmers in winter to keep their feet warm because they're too poor to buy boots.

One exquisite pair of clogs.

Next, we visited a typical dutch farmhouse where cheese is stil made in the traditional way.

That's super a lot of cheese!

Anyone wants? haha

Outside the cheese factory. Weather is good.

In the bus, passing by some farms with lots of cows. Do you want to count how many there are? I counted and it was 24! According to the tour guide, if the cows are in the middle of the field, it will not be raining anytime soon but if they're near the canals or water, the weather is likely to be wet.

We then alighted at this place to walk to the harbour to take a boat. On the way there, we past by many pretty little houses with different colours of flowers.

On the boat! Hmm actually it's a ship haha

At the harbour.

And so we reached Delft, the place where pottery is made. Not very interesting probably because I'm not exactly into pottery haha. It would be a different story if there's a chance to shape the clay yourself though.

Hopped on the bus again to the last destination. On the way we past by the International Court of Justice. It's located in Den Haag, the place where the Queen lives and works in. ICJ is really huge and magnificent looks like some sort of a castle. I never knew it was in Holland though. Thought it is in Switzerland or something.