One way to the UK?

From Paris, we headed to Amsterdam! The drive there was not too bad or long on the bus, but being sick with a head cold and a sore back still made it seem like a crappy way and time to travel! We stopped by Brugge on the way and had enough time to walk to the main old square, look around the church etc and buy some traditional belgium food – fries with mayonaise! Didn’t have time to get into a proper Chocolatier but bought some Belgium chocolate from the supermarket, and did have time to visit the Cat and Dog Shop! So many nice products there for the pets!

On arriving in Amsterdam we checked into the almost brand-new StayOkay Zeeburg (HI) Hostel. The place was great, but the location not so great! Out in the East and had to get a tram into town all the time, or a taxi if you were coming home late. The first night, we went into the Red Light District for a look around with some other girls that we met on the bus and at the hostel. Firstly it was a bit light out still, so we had dinner at a nice Indonesian Restaurant near the main square, then headed to the Red Light District to look around for a while, wandering the streets. You would be amazed at some of the girls – they should be getting paid to be on the catwalk and modelling clothes rather than selling their bodies. It is quite sad, but in Amsterdam as it’s all legal they are looked after very well in terms of health care and insurance etc! Lots of dodgy people around the area though so not a good place to stay too long. The other thing Amsterdam (aka The Damage) is known for is the Coffee Shops… which do not sell coffee, but rather legally sell marijuana. Amsterdam operates on the Harm Principle (legislation) that you can do anything to yourself, but do no harm to others. It seems to work strangely enough! Because no one is armed and drugs are legal there isn’t much to fight over. Oh I nearly forgot to mention, when walking through the District we came across a “movie” being filmed… well there was two scantily clad girls chasing each other and running into a barbie pink Hummer. Sad sad acting and the girls looked like Paris Hilton hahaha.

The first day in Amsterdam, Mara and Lis went on the bike tour which I skipped because of back pain issues. So instead I went to the Rijksmuseum and wandered around in there for about  hours with my headset guided tour – it was actually really interesting and the home of many paintings by Rembrandt and his students. That night, was our pubcrawl!!! The Ultimate Party Pubcrawl – hosted by Canadians, Americans, a guy from Argentina and one from Ireland. It started off pretty casual and slow and I was more interested in watching England beat Russia in the football, however add on a few pubs with the free drinks (one free drink at each pub, and free shots inbetween pubs) and then I mentioned to one of the tour leaders that I’d taken a few Salsa lessons, and of course this was the guy from Argentina, who can actually dance properly, so I ended up dancing away pretty much the rest of the pub crawl! It was actually really fun though to put my whole three lessons into real-life practice! I think us girls got home about 4am-ish, and I walked into the room to find Mara and Lis eating Magnums in their beds!!!

Day two in Amsterdam… as you could imagine not one of us woke up early! When we did all get up, we headed into town to see the Van Gogh Museum and then back to The Dam (main square) so I could show Elissa the shopping street, where I bought my new black ankle boots the day prior! I am so glad that I am turning Pounds into Euros, otherwise things would seem so expensive! Anyway, Mara found an internet cafe and Lis and I headed back to the Hostel and had dinner there. Check out Mara’s blog page for a funny story about what happens when you leave your bag on an Amsterdam Tram!!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.