Amsterdam

1/17/07-1/21/07
Starring myself, John, Matt, Conor, and Gallo D'Oro (Lauran, Aly, John, Jason, and Blake)

Getting to Amsterdam was no easy task. We had to sit in the airplane on the runway for at least two hours before we even took off because the wind was so bad at the Eindhoven airport. They waited and waited and waited and finally took off sometime around 3:30 p.m. At first the flight was smooth, but soon things got really shaky. It was by far the worst turbulance I've ever experienced. Every time the plane dropped it sent a shock through my body, all the way through my fingertips and toes. When things got even worse people started throwing up. The flight attendants stumbled up and down the aisle collecting barf bags in large garbage sacks. The lady sitting in front of me had a pretty large collection going by the time we landed. Our jokes and laughing turned into nervous chatter as the plane tried to touch down the first time. It was way too shaky, so the pilot pulled back up and circled around for another jolty 20 minutes. Then we went down again, and though I wanted to land, I was thinking that maybe landing wasn't the best idea at the time. But the pilot pulled it off this time and the tumultuous ride finally came to an end. There was a man on our flight who we had seen earlier at the gate who looked just like Jack Bauer. By the time we had landed, he had blarred multiple times and looked pretty sick. Blake turned around, looked at him, then looked at us, and shouted, "I guess he's not Jack Bauer afterall."

Of course all the shuttles from Eindhoven to Amsterdam had been cancelled due to weather and the train station in Amsterdam had its roof blown off so trains weren't running either. We finally convinced a cab driver to take us to Amsterdam for a decent price. So, after a full day of traveling, we finally arrived in Amsterdam. Even though we went through a lot to get there, it was quite an adventure with some good memories.

Amsterdam's a great city, with way more than just a bunch of coffee shops and a crazy red light district, a major reason why a lot of people end up going there. My favorite things were the Van Gogh museum, Ann Frank's house, and the Heineken Experience. The city itself was amazing, with canals similar to Venice and unique architecture. Our hostel was in the perfect location, right near downtown and within walking distance of everything. We had the perfect set-up and a great group. All in all the trip was a blast.

On a sidenote, Amsterdam had movies in English, so I took advantage of it one night and saw Rocky Balboa, or Rocky VI. My expectations weren't very high, but I came out of the theatre highly impressed. The final fight scene was awesome and it got me really fired up, which is the main reason why I like the Rocky series in the first place. His opponent once again has a great nickname (Mason "The Line" Dixon) and Rocky is in classic form in this movie, breaking out some memorable speeches. There is one scene where he goes before the court to see if he can be eligible to fight, and they turn him down. As he's walking out the door, he stops and asks, "Yo, don't I got some rights? Rights, like in that official piece of paper they wrote down the street there?" He then unleashes a riveting speech that takes on important issues such as the Bill of Rights, the pursuit of happiness, and the judicial system as a whole. It's up there with his Cold War speech from Rocky IV ("I guess what I'm trying to say, is that if I can change, and yous can change, everybody can change"). Now all Rocky fans can breathe easy; the mistake that was Rocky V can be annulled. Those who have the 5-disc DVD set can replace Rocky V with this new flick as soon as it comes out on DVD to complete their collection.