For our short break, a group of us have decided to take a weekend trip to Amsterdam, the city of bikes. I loved it there because everyone was walking around and biking, there’s a lot less traveling by car there. The city is very walkable, but you have to have a whole new level of alertness when walking around there. It’s a lot to take in because you’re trying to watch out for pedestrians, bike lanes, cars and mopeds in a small area. Another neat thing about Amsterdam is that there are canals running through the city, they were highly engineered to work with the water running through the city. This allows for small boats to travel through the city which promotes some tourism, but allows locals to get around through new modes of transportation. 
Some of the other places we visited in our short visit were Van Gogh’s Museum and viewed the infamous sunflower painting, starry night, the bedroom, and his self portrait. It was really cool to see because growing up, we’ve always learned about his paintings and how iconic they were. Seeing them in person really brought the paintings to life through the textures and colors that he used.
One of my favorite places there was visiting the northern sea. It reminded me of the beaches back home, but it was definitely less smelly with a lot more jellyfish washed up on the shore. Wish we could’ve spent more time in Amsterdam, but it was a great experience.
Our last city we stayed in was Hamburg, we were there for a short 3 days and travelled around as much as we could. We walked around the city as much as we could. They had a similar, waterways as Amsterdam. We also visited the iconic Elphilharmonie, a large concert hall with spectacular views.
We also visited a smaller urban park that was designed before the public had a say in it. Most parks that are installed usually take community input for ideas, needs and wants, but none of the apartments around the park are built yet. Even with the park being built first, it seemed to already be getting good use. I really like the playgrounds in Germany compared to the ones in America because they’re a lot more abstract and test the strength and agility of the kids on the playground. They let the kids use their own imagination compared to having equipment that is very straightforward.
Overall, Hamburg was a fun place to walk around and tour. We had just enough time to see what we needed to see.
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