Moving forward with my Christmas 2023 solo travel, my next destination was the daring and turbulent city of Amsterdam. Despite the anticipated absence of tulips and the sun, I still had my hopes up because quite frankly, I have heard a lot of nice things about this city. Honest to goodness, it delivered the goods. My only regret was over-tightening it out on the accommodation budget side directly exposing me AMS’ dirty laundry I hoped I never found out. Sleeping in a filthy overpopulated hostel room was not an ideal way to spend such wonderful holidays. Once again, I made that careless choice and paid a hefty price in the end. Definitely not aworthy trade-off.
Other than that, the rest of it all was no less than amazing at least at
the surface level (for now). I spent most of my time walking around and along most of the busy
canals from the Prinsengracht & Herengracht to the famously sin scenic district aka Red Light and occasionally sitting intently on coffee shops and bars for coffe (of course!?), beers, and beyond. Honestly, I was not able to fully maximize the trip due to poor planning OR the
lack thereof, hopelessly and miserably failing to book in advance tickets for the Rijksmuseum,
Anne Frank’s House, and even the van Gogh’s museum (with limited edition
pokemon features at that time).
So that’s pretty much how my first ever Amsterdam trip went – not very bad, but definitely not very good either. It's officially an unfinished business warranting a better-planned follow-up visit next time. For takeaways: plan better next time (need I say more?!) + invest on quality👌
