Bikes, cheese and clogs.
We did the laundry in the morning, cos I was down to my cheeky undies which aren’t appropriate for bike riding so…!
Lija buggered off and did her own thing cos her back’s playing up, and Lis and I did the bike tour around Amsterdam. We went out to a cheese and clog making factory and were shown how both were made by a very eccentric Dutch man who reminded me of Goldmember from Austin Powers. He was swinging his hips and gyrating to the clog machine, and told us his special garlic cheese was like an aphrodisiac for men. What a character. For some bizarre tourist impulse buy, I now have a kilo of cheese to take back to London to eat. I love my cheese, but a kilo is a hell of a lot and I keep wanting to start eating it now, but it looks too pretty to hack into, even though it is stinking out my clothes in my pack!
We also stopped by a traditional windmill, although these still work Europe-wide they use wind farms now. Because Amersterdam was built on marshland the ground is sinking and many places are on a slant, and some were built on a slant with hooks to winch furniture into upstairs windows instead of up spiral staircases.
Not to mention the bikes. 80% of Amsterdam owns a bike, 10,000 are found in the canals each year, and eight in ten bikes are not in the original owner’s possession. Out tour guide Mike said to us, if you need a bike, walk into a crowd of bikers waiting at the traffic lights, and just before the lights turn green yell out “Hey that’s my bike’ pointing to the group. More than likely half the crowd will look around guiltily and go to hand over the bike they’re holding. It was great to get back at all the bikers when you’re the one on the bike, ringing people to move it and taking whatever route you prefer.
On the way back we stopped at the pub for a pint, cider in my case, which meant I was a tad bit wobbly on the ride home and consequently cut Jeremy off several times. I kinda lost my camera as I was going round a corner, but showing what great performance my little pocket rocket is, it came out with barely any scratches. Phew! Learnt that lesson – don’t take photos while riding your bike after drinking alcohol. We all went for frites with satay sauce (different, interesting, and quite nice!) then raided a nearby lolly shop. We were eating them straight from the boxes when the guy wasn’t watching, but we bought a heap too!
We convinced Jeremy and Josh to come on the pub crawl with us, but their bags were lost in Italy and they also have their day packs and the clothes they were wearing – boardies, t-shirts and flip-flops. THey had to do a wash earlier in the week and literally sat in towels in the laundry waiting for their clothes to dry. So we stuck Jeremy in Wizza’s jeans and Josh in my cargoes (he was in the jeans at first, but found his manhood to be compromised with their fit) we all had a good laugh about it anyway.
There were about forty people on the ‘ultimate party pub crawl’, not just Busabout but travellers from everywhere. It started off quietly, but after a free drink in each place and a shot of something vodka on exit and entry to each bar, we were shortly having a blast, yours truly ended up a little bit tipsy having a whole lotta fun and meeting a really nice Canadian guy Doug, and his friends Steph and Andrew. And I have to be nice here cos Doug knows my blog address and I’m sure Steph will have a good laugh at my expense. So I’ll leave the rest to my knowledge and your imagination.
I think it was roughly three in the morning when Lija, Lis and I bundled into a taxi back to the hostel. What a night.
Tags: Travel
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