Europe Backpacking - Netherlands again! (Part 1)

Hello people,

How's everyone today? How do you feel like during this pandemic time? It's been almost 2 months and I hope everyone is keeping their sanity alive.

Before this pandemic happened, I had a chance to visit the Netherlands to meet the dude. Well you know who. As crazy as it seems, I made an impulse decision to meet him. So here's what I did for two weeks there.

Among all the bad decisions that I made while traveling, this is the worse travel time that I chose. My flight schedule was so insane that made me realize that saving few hundreds is not worth it. So please people, do not make the same mistake that I did.

February 23-24. Flight from Kuala Lumpur - Abu Dhabi - Amsterdam
After arriving to Amsterdam, I took a train to Delft (cos that's where the dude lives). The train is around an hour long so I had time to rest.

February 25. We travel to Den Haag
Because both of us are suckers for museums, our first place to visit is the Mauritshuis museum. This museum display many spectacular paintings from Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and more. I bet you can recognize few paintings.

This is the famous painting of the girl with pearl earring. This is one of Vermeer famous painting. Fun fact, Vermeer is a dutch! What makes this painting famous is that the subject is an imaginary figure. In this case, the girl is wearing exotic dress, wearing oriental turban, and an improbably large pearl earrings. This style does not fit the era when Vermeer was painting it.







If you ever watch the Goldfinch movie, the movie was inspired by this painting. This is the painting by Carel Fabritius dated 1654. What makes the painting famous is the way that Fabritius portray the bird so lifelike, endowing this modest subject with his skills and talents.
Honestly, this become my favorite painting now. And I even got a postcard with this painting on!

While we were there, there's this extra exhibition of George Stubbs. He basically studied about the anatomy of horses and painted them. You know that during this time, people are proud of their horses. It's like a sign of wealth and power. Stubbs did an excellent work in painting horses and his most achievable painting is this horse named Whistlejacket. If you had the chance to visit this museum, look for this painting cos it's a very huge canvas and the horse is life-size. You really feels like the horse right next to you!

February 26: We travel to Rotterdam!

Here's the highlight of our trip. We're going to Kinderdijk! To go to this place, we need to go to Rotterdam and take water buses from here. Water bus is just like ferry. 

Kinderdijk is one of the places that I do not mind going again. The journey to this place is insane but totally worth it. We need to take 2 water buses to reach here. We chose the wrong season to visit this place because the wind is just crazy and makes it unbearable. I was wearing a very thick jacket and still is cold. Rains + Wind is no joke guys, I almost froze on the water ferry. 

Kinderdijk is one of UNESCO heritage city, it places a lot of traditional windmills and the view is just breathtaking. We managed to walk around along the wind and took nice pictures. When we're done, it's time for more water buses to go back to Rotterdam. 

Once in Rotterdam, we walked around the city. Compare to other places in Netherland, Rotterdam is quite a modern city. All the buildings are aesthetic and modern architecture which is nice. You'll find colorful and weird buildings here. Here's one of them.

After the walking, we feel hungry. So what's better place to go in Rotterdam than Market Hall! 

When we reached here, I was glad to be indoor at last. Here, you'll find all sort of foods from street food to international cuisine. We got our meals and now for snacks. So we treat ourselves with fresh stroopwafel and poffertjes. Poffertjes is like mini pancakes serves with powdery sugar and stroopwafel is cinnamon thin wafel. Delish! 

I think that's it for today, there's more places we went so wait for Part 2!

Europe backpacking - ICELAND

Hello, 

I feel like writing today. Not exactly, I feel like sharing pictures. In case anyone wonders, I did backpacking for 2 months in Europe last summer. Now I have the chance to share my journey. I took awesome pictures. 

5/17/2016

We flew from Boston to Reykajavic which is the capital city of Iceland. 

Tip 1: The exchange rate is 1 USD = 130 ISK 

The first place that we visited is their famous church called Hallgrimskirkja due to its architectural style.  

Fun Fact: Iceland is an inhabitant country, 90% of their population stays in the capital city. We camped during the whole trip with our own camping gear. 

5/19/2017

Tip 3: We rented a car from the airport. Need international licence. All the cars are using manual drive! 

Our first stop from Reykjavik is the Thingvellir National Park. The drive took about 40 minutes. This place is the plate tectonics that divide the North America and Europe continents. 

Tip 4: If you have a GPS, buy the Europe chip so that you won't have to rely on internet if there's no connection. 

After few hours spent exploring the national park, we drove to Geysir which is the active natural geysir that spouts water every few minutes. 

It was fascinating as we can experienced the water sprouts a few meters in front of us. 

Then we continue our journey to Gullfoss Waterfall. It was told that this waterfall is the most popular attraction in Iceland. 

Geysir and Gullfoss are 10 minutes away, so you won't miss the chance to visit both! 

5/20/2016

The next day, we drove to Seljalandfoss which took 1 hour and 30 minutes drive. We camped the night around the waterfall. 

Then we continue our journey to see Eujafjallajokull which means the 'island mountain glacier'. It is a volcano that is entirely covered by an ice cap and the last time it erupted was in April 2010. 

We also visited Skogafoss waterfall which is the famous waterfall from Shah Rukh Khan new movie. It was funny as we reached there, nobody was there and we had the place for ourselves. Once we were going back, people came from any side and started to crowd that place. We also did a lil bit hike here to view this waterfall from the top side. It was amazing!

Tip 5: Go to all these famous attractions early in the morning and enjoy the view all by yourself. 

 

After few hours, we drove to the famous Wrecked DC-3 Plane which landed on Solheimasandur beach 40 years ago. This attraction is famous as it crashed badly, but all the passengers survived and have been there ever since. We have to walked 2 km from the parking lot to the airplane and we did not expect any long walk. But we went through it for the sake of Iceland. Imagine that we have to walk for 4 km in total just to see this crashed airplane. Fuhh 

My favorite place in Iceland would be Dirholaey, which is a cliff 30 minutes driving from the airplane. The cliff is so amazing that all I can say is God is a wonderful creator.

Iceland is famous with its Black Sand Beach. It's so wonderful that I can experience a beach that is different from what I always see. 

As you can see, there's a cave, the opposite side of the cave is this magnificent view. The rock was natural carved to hexagonal shape die to the lava and erosion from the wave. 

5/21/2016

Skatafall was our  next destination. We hiked to see this waterfall with black basalt column. This is biggest waterfall at this destination. There were a lot of small waterfalls and we hiked to experience the nature here. 

The hiking was about 5.5 km and we can experience being in the peak of Iceland and enjoy the mountain views.
 
We travel to Jakursalon Lake, although it is summer in Iceland, the weather is still cold. We did not fully prepared for a cold weather, so we only bought our Fall jacket which was our biggest mistake. Went we reached Jakursalon Lake, we were in awe that the lake is still full of icebergs.

We drove to Dettifoss for almost 6 hours to experience the biggest power waterfall in Iceland.
5/22/2016

We stop to Namafjall before going to Godafoss which is the highlight of our nature expedition. Namfjall is a mountain ovelooking Hverir with boiling mudpots and fumaroles. We can see a lot of tourist took some muds from this place and apply on their face. I'm not sure about it effectiveness but it does sounds promising.

Our last destination before going back to Reykjavic was Godafoss waterfall. Godafoss means The Waterfalls of the Gods, and it is considered to be the most magnificent waterfalls in Iceland.
 
5/23/2016
We drove to Akureyri which is the second city in Iceland. This city is famous with their fish and seafood. At last, we managed to eat decent food after a week on camping ground and eat camping food. We spent the whole day in the city.

5/24/2016
We drove to Blue Lagoon which was the highlight of our trip. On our way, we stopped by the road to take picture here as the view was so nice and the rainbow there was perfect.

5/25/2016
We end our Iceland journey pampering ourselves in this natural hot spring.

The end. I hope that my journey can help any of you guys if you're planning to go to Iceland. This is only the first part of my summer travel, I have way more pictures to share. Just wait for it. :)