I woke up the second day of the trip surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and determined to enjoy everything Amsterdam had to offer and I was going to do it alone. So I popped on my favourite go get them outfit, knee-high boots and headed out to explore. Naturally, you can not explore on an empty tummy.

Now for all the things that I knew Amsterdam was famous for, I had no idea that cake was one of them, there are hundreds of shops dedicated to the most beautiful looking cakes. Feeling anxious about being on holiday with the ex, my tummy was knotted for most of the holiday which might have actually turned out to have saved me the embarrassment of not being able to fit into my jeans from cake overload. But I did manage to get a slice of cherry pie in, I dream of being a blogger who takes incredible food pictures, however judging from this picture I am a long way from that. The cake was much tastier than the picture makes it look, with a large coffee, the winter sun out in force I took a sit on a bench and enjoyed the world go by whilst trying my hardest not to drop cherry juice on my top! I managed it in case you were wondering, Emma 1 Life 0.

I had a vague list of places I wanted to visit but no real plan so once I double checked that I was, in fact, cherry juice free I started wandering and I wandered for hours. I found Amsterdam to be a rather an underwhelming city, don’t get me wrong it is beautiful and maybe because it has been on my bucket list for so long that I expected something more (turns out that is a running theme in my life) and it didn’t quite live up to it. I feel that it would be a much better city to visit during the warmer months but I would have loved to see it just a couple of weeks earlier when the canals had frozen over and people were ice skating on them.

I feel blessed that I must have a pretty approachable face because people are always extremely friendly to me which helps considering I travel so much on my own and I love hearing stories about other peoples lives. About every hour I would stop for a coffee, mainly for the warmth because the coffee sucked! And a chat with the locals, who told me all the best places to visit and the best times to go to avoid crowds. Luckily I never really felt like Amsterdam was crowded but that might be because we were there Monday to Friday, pretty sure I would absolutely hate it on the weekends.

I spent the whole day bobbing in and out of cafes, stopping to watch the world go by and exploring the miles and miles of canals, I really spent a lot of time soul searching, letting the cool breeze start to mend my broken heart and daydreaming of all the wonderful plans I have for the up and coming months. Despite the fact that he was somewhere in the city too I find confront in travel, there is something about being cities, new places filled with people that don’t know a single thing about you. The feeling of being anonymous kinda puts everything into perspective and believe me I needed it.

Let’s talk bikes! I toyed with the idea of renting a bike for the day but kept coming to the conclusion that I bloody hate riding a bike so quickly gave that idea up. However, thousands of people do love riding bikes and you definitely have to be paying attention whilst walking around Amsterdam because one minute you are footloose and fancy-free and the next you are surrounded by bikes. I imagine it to be Jeremy Clarkson’s idea of hell, although the riders are much friendly than those of London.

Sometimes the world leaves you just what you need, just at the right moment. I used to love here, might now be my favourite ever quote!

Not going to lie, going on holiday with an ex will make you pull out the big guns when it comes to getting ready! And the strange thing was that for the first time in a long time I felt more confident than ever!

Upon my wandering I stumbled upon the floating flower market, again I was left feeling completely underwhelmed, however just in front of them is a Christmas shop that is open all year round, which did leave me feeling a little excited for Christmas again.

This blog post was not very positive on poor little Amsterdam, don’t worry it gets better on tomorrows blog post!