Looking back: Amsterdam, Paris, Seville & Granada
Amsterdam, Netherlands
We landed in our first stop, Amsterdam, at the tail end of a particularly long heatwave. Something I noticed firstly about Amsterdam was its color palette. Maybe it was the time of year or the haze of jetlag setting in, but it seemed like the city bounced with color at all times of the day. A perfectly golden light hit the brick, the trees, the canals. Everything shimmered, even if it was just the heat radiating off of the sidewalks. Dehydrated, we chose to have beer as our first beverage.
The famed Almond Blossoms.
This was Paul’s first time seeing Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms, ever. As in, he had never seen this referenced anywhere before seeing the original in person. He said that it reminded him of the Arizona Green Tea beverage can. He’s not wrong!
Due to the fact that we arrived at the end of a heatwave, it was still very hot. Especially in our hotel room, which was conveniently located but didn’t have aircon (although it was equipped with two working metal fans). We found refuge in museums, along with all of the other tourists. Surrounded by masterpieces and made comfortable by climate control, it was easy to get swept back in time. Paul and I chose our favorites between the Rembrandts, Vermeers, and Van Goghs.
Taken from our day trip visiting historic windmills in Zaanse Schans. We treated ourselves to delicious ice cream, walked through antique stores, and sat through demos of Gouda cheese and wooden clogs being made.
With the trip a couple of years in hindsight, I realize that Amsterdam has many “you have to see this” sights, more than I realized when we were planning our trip. You have to see the canals (that’s unavoidable), you have to walk through the Red Light District (more pedestrian than I thought), you have to see some windmills, and you have to see the Anne Frank House.
The Anne Frank Museum was one of the last things we did during our few days in Amsterdam. I don’t have the words to express the experience other than it was bizarre and sobering. One aspect that added to the peculiar experience was that after you walk into a modern building, scan your ticket, sit through a brief but required overview of the space, you mindlessly follow the guides through some hallways and ascend up a number of stairs and find yourself at the bookcase. The bookcase that functioned as a revolving door into the hiding place where Anne Frank, her family, and family friends hid. It was incredible to walk where she walked, to see where she and the others in hiding ate their meals. I still have a hard time believing I was able to see that with my own two eyes.
Paris, France
Picnic on the steps at Sacré-Cœur Basilica with Paul and Ingrid.
I think that a lot of people hope that one day, they can visit Paris with a person they love. Hopefully, the love of their life. This was that occasion for me.
Having had the privilege of visiting friends who live in Paris a number of times before this trip, I wanted Paul to see a lot of the major sights and the places that meant something specific to me. Places like the little dumpling place that I went to with my friend, Lauren, and the art supply store feels more like an artists’ creative apothecary — Magasin Sennelier.
Like many of my favorite cities, I often leave Paris with more places saved on my Google Map to see the next time. Paul and I were really happy that we chose Paris as our second stop of our European trip, seeing familiar faces and flitting about the city as if it was our own.
Seville, Spain
Seville’s immediate impression was warm, energetic, and full of surprises. We stayed at Hotel Amadeus, which leaned into the classical music theme with the rooms named after famous composers and instruments decorating the walls. Paul and I were really excited about exploring the city, so we dropped off our bags rather quickly and then set out to walk around. Without much of a plan, we headed for the park and found ourselves in front of Plaza de España! Paul recognized it as the backdrop for a scene in Star Wars.
We walked through the Plaza and marveled at how we found ourselves there by chance. Before we continued our walk through the city, we noticed that about a hundred teenagers were starting to gather at one end of the structure and honestly within minutes, Kpop was blasting from the speakers and those same teenagers were dancing the choreography to the songs in unison. Even though Korean culture has been heavily shared and adopted across the world for years at this point, it’s still a bit of a shock to see huge groups get together in a seemingly organized fashion to dance and sing to Korean songs.
We didn’t have too much planned in Seville other than going on a sunset tour of Catedral de Seville and La Giralda. The tour brought us up and down and through the various parts of the cathedral, and the view from the roof was stunning!
At this point in the trip, we realized that we would love to relax and slow things down. We saw on Google Maps that Aire Ancient Baths had a Seville location (actually the first location!) and since we were huge fans of the NYC location in Tribeca, we made reservations to visit the pools. However, we didn’t bring our bathing suits and I wasn’t really wanting to rent one from the spa, so we decided to venture out to a local shopping mall to pick some up. With it being mid-September, bathing suits were very difficult to come by and I was personally stressing out because the search was starting to cut into our spa reservation. Although it felt like a while, Paul and I eventually found bathing suits that we wouldn’t mind being seen in and grabbed fast food to go before piling into a taxi back to town.
On our last day in Seville, we did a tour of Real Alcazár, a Moorish palace that is very reminiscent to the Alhambra in Granada.
Granada, Spain
With Real Alcazár fresh in our minds, we were increasingly more excited to see the highlight of the trip - the Alhambra in Granada. We took a train from Seville to Granada (forever and always a public transportation fan) and I think that I was struck with how the landscape differed from Seville. It was so much more mountainous than I expected! Our hotel was situated across from the Cathedral (a choice that I did have second thoughts about the liveliness on the streets was easily heard in our room!).
It felt like Granada was larger than Seville and that there were possibly more tourists visiting at that time of year. More specifically, we noticed there were many more Korean tourists, perhaps further inspired to visit the Alhambra because of the Korean drama “Memories of Alhambra” (don’t rush to watch it, it’s just okay). Our observations were validated when we went to an Italian restaurant and saw that in addition to English translations underneath the Spanish menu titles, there were also Korean translations! In print!
We heeded the advice that we saw online and bought tickets for entry at the Alhambra for the early morning. We walked from our hotel to the entrance, which helped set in the feelings and mood for me, personally. I honestly can’t remember how or when I learned about the Alhambra, but I have had its presence imprinted in the back of mind for a long time. As international travel became more of a possibility in my life, the Alhambra was a destination I wanted to see sooner rather than later. The intricacy and scale - in design, materials, colors, setting, landscape - is mind-boggling. I’m extremely grateful for being able to experience it in person.
There are many more aspects of the trip that felt serendipitous and stressful, but that’s the magic of traveling. I could write more, but I don’t really want to. And I want to leave some of it for me.
