Likes and Dislikes

Likes and Dislikes

On my trip with there were a few things that I enjoyed and a few that I did not.

Architecture and City Design

I really liked the variety of architecture in England and Amsterdam. Many of the buildings were different colors, different shapes and made out of different materials. It was much more interesting than in Paris, where almost every single house and the building was the same tannish-gray stone, making many of the buildings all the same. The lack of variety in the buildings in Paris was extremely boring when every single one is the same shape and color.

Amsterdam   London

Paris

Amsterdam is a combination of a normal city without skyscrapers and Venice, Italy. It has wonderful canals across the city, as well as streets for people who do not want to walk or take a boat everywhere, as it is in Venice.

In Amsterdam, much more people bike or walk than drive, as is it here in America, and when people are not riding their bikes they need to store them someplace. As soon as we stepped outside of the train station we saw a parking lot for bikes that was absolutely full. It was so full that there were taller bike locking posts that you could put your bike on top of to make it so that there were two stories of bikes. I’m surprised that people can find their bikes in this mess, and if they can't, they will get a new bike and their old one will just sit there taking up space that could otherwise be used. I wonder how many of the stored bikes, are actually used, and how many are lost and forgotten. I expect people must have tracking devices on their bikes so they do not lose them.

In Amsterdam, we had to be extremely careful when crossing streets. Sometimes there are no curbs and there are six lanes: bikes and motorcycles, cars, trains. Most of the cars were electric, or hybrids, making them extremely environmentally friendly because Amsterdam gets a lot of its electricity from green sources. During our time in Amsterdam, we noticed that there were a ton of wind turbines across the landscape and solar panels on many of the houses. In addition to that, I assume that they have geothermal rods underneath the houses, feeding off of earth's warmth. I also noticed that in there were car chargers in the places that cars could park their cars.

Sidewalks are quite narrow and sometimes we had to walk single file, which was hard for Baba, who was always trying to walk right next to me. In addition, the bike lanes were often connected to the sidewalk without a curb, just a dotted line painted on the ground. Furthermore, instead of the intersection of roads being a step down for the pedestrians, like it is in the US, sometimes the bikes, motorcycles, and cars have a small ramp up to the level of the sidewalk, then back down again, making it very harder to know where the intersections are.

Language

I really liked being In England and Amsterdam where everyone spoke English. Without knowing the language, if we needed to look at a menu, or ask for directions, then we would have to find someone who speaks both languages. Baba, however, speaks a little bit of many languages, so she could talk to people and read the menus when we were in need.

In England, I find it funny that people look extremely surprised whenever Baba started talking to them and they never start a conversation on their own. This is because they were probably not used to people just going up to them and acting as though they were continuing a conversation that they had earlier.

Food:

I had the second-best waffle in my life in the Keukenhof tulip gardens (Waffle Cabin, skiing at Sunday River was the best)

I had so many pastries. In France, I ate some delicious tarts and some other things such as Chouquettes

In France, at about lunch time many of the nearby cafes were completely full, any in most, almost everyone was smoking, which made it very unpleasant to breathe. The cafes had delicious foods even with the disgusting atmosphere.

Food in France was really good, but it's really repetitive, many of the appealing foods were the same such as beef bourguignon, hamburger, and French Onion soup. In England and Amsterdam, it was much more varied and there were always meals on the menu that I had no idea what they were. When we went to the Keukenhof tulip gardens I ate waffle that was one of the best cooked and best-tasting waffles I’ve ever had, the waffle was a liege waffle.

not all of these pictures were taken by me, although I did see these things, I thought that other people's pictures were better looking than mine.