Amsterdam!

So here I am in a 5am Uber ride to the airport headed to Amsterdam nauseous from lack of sleep and I thought to myself, “wow, I’m really blessed.” That I get to travel throughout Europe is something I do not take for granted. If you had known what the beginning of the year was like for me you would be shocked at where I am right now. I will share with you what really propelled my transformation soon but for now here’s a little of our first day in Amsterdam. I’m learning everyday to be grateful for the blessing God sends us… The flight to Amsterdam is so quick from London. 1 hour to be exact. As soon as we landed we headed to Hotel Pulitzer Amsterdam. You guys…this hotel is so dreamy and quaint. It was this quirky yet classic vibe and service that upholds to a 5 star without feeling stuffy. Also the toiletries are all from Le Labo, I meann…I’ve actually never been to a hotel with such high end and trendy toiletries #goals. Our room wasn’t ready yet so we checked our bags and started exploring. The hotel is basically in the heart of everything. We are right next to Nine Streets which is iconic Amsterdam. We basically could walk to anywhere we wanted to go.

Wearing: & Other Stories dress

First of all, the first thing I noticed is how chill people from here are. London is such a big city always hustling and bustling it was a nice change of pace to see how the Dutch live. It feels much colder here I think it may be because it’s near water because the temperature actually wasn’t much different from London but it felt much colder. And everyone says London rains a lot but Amsterdam has the WEIRDEST weather I’ve ever experienced. Maybe it’s the time of year but it would just start raining out of NOWHERE and then stop. It happened all day while we were walking it was sunny and then literally in a blink of an eye rain and then BAM, it stops. We just embraced getting rained on (well tried to at least). The weather says its supposed to rain every day we’re here but I’m hoping it will at least be on and off like today. Poor Emily, my little California girl, she’s doing a good job bracing the cold and rain but she’s definitely feeling her first real cold weather, it’s kind of funny to watch. She lost her glove today and was so confident just wearing one glove because at least one hand could be warm!

We were so hungry so we ended up at Ree7 a cute little brunch spot right down the street from the hotel. I know I keep saying food was good everywhere but we haven’t eaten anywhere bad so far thank God. The pancakes were probably some of the best pancakes I’ve ever had, no lie!After brunch we walked around a bit then headed back to the hotel to check in. Our room is adorable, I’ll be vlogging about this trip so you’ll see it soon. I’ve been feeling so exhausted all day. It’s been one stop since I arrived to London and I feel like some virus is trying to infiltrate my body so we took time to rest in the afternoon.But then we were STARVING again and torn because we didn’t want to leave the cozy hotel room to brace the wind, cold and rain that awaited us outside. But hunger one and I we headed to De Reiger for dinner. The food was…you guessed it! YUMMAYYY. I had a very healthy dinner so we decided we deserved dessert. Emily found a place called Winkle that was known for their Apple Pie so we walked a few blocks over to indulge.

Ok so after everything, this was the most underwhelming place we’ve been. The apple pie was good but it didn’t exactly blow me away and felt more like an apple cake then a pie, at least the kind of apple pie I’m used to. It was almost like deep dish apple pie. It was good, but left me a bit underwhelmed.

Of course it started raining on our way back and Emily decided she didn’t want to use the GPS so here we are navigating Amsterdam in the dark our first time ever being there. But Emily did good and got us back in one piece!

I’m not looking forward to the rain tomorrow but also learning to embrace everything lately so I know we’ll make the best of the day regardless.