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Published: December 13th 2007
Canals of Utrecht
Very picturesque, despite the gloomy weatherWell after somehow (‘ahem’) getting time off work, I embarked on a 4 day weekend to my first non-British country since leaving sunny Spain and Portugal 4 long months ago. Just thinking back to the sun and the beaches, it seems like a lot longer!
Anyway, Friday morning, Ben and I made our way to the miniature plane that took across the Channel and dumped us into Amsterdam. We didn’t have much time to appreciate it before we headed up to our first destination of Utrecht. Utrecht was only about half an hour outside of Amsterdam, but was a quiet(ish) pretty little town. I say quiet, but that was really only until the football started.
Our main challenge was not the language, as the Dutch speak excellent English, but watching out for the silent killers of the Netherlands. Yes, that’s right. The bicycles. On a quiet little cobbled road, with no noise for miles around, and no cars to worry about, you step in out to cross the road in what seems perfect safety. Until you hear a whizzing noise and something flies past you and you hear the muttered curses of a Dutchman on a bicycle. Where the
More canals
With clocktower in the background. As you can see the weather hasn't improved either. f%ck did that come from you ask? Before you are answered, more fly around the corners almost removing limbs from you. You’d think this is a one-off incident, but it happened several times within our first few hours in sleepy little Utrecht! I later read that there over 16 millions bikes in the country! On the bright side, we hardly ever saw any fat people, and if we did I think they were probably tourists.
Our first night, we headed along to see FC Utrecht play Sparta Rotterdam in the local ‘Premier’ football league. We sat in the cold and hoped it wouldn’t be a dull 0-0 draw. It wasn’t. We were treated to a fantastic game of attacking football where the home team won 7-1. We were also in the main bunch of home supporters so had a great time chanting and singing with them, even if we didn’t know what it meant. We also joined the town in heading out for a few quiet drinks that night as well…….
The following day, we headed back to Amsterdam and check into the world-famous Flying Pig hostel. Our first mission was to get tickets for the following day’s
Canals and bikes
Here is just a minute percentage of the bikes that are around football, but unfortunately we were unsuccessful unless we wanted to pay the ‘tourist’ price of €45 a ticket, compared with €16 for the previous nights game. We didn’t, so we settled for watching a couple of games at the pub and spending the money on trying some local beers.
After the pub, I had a life changing experience. I tried Argentinean steak for the first time. It wasn’t cheap, but my God it was worth every gram. It beats any steak I have had before and if I didn’t already want to go to Argentina, that alone would be worth the trip.
Then it was time to check out the Amsterdam nightlife. And after what I had heard about the place, I was actually a little disappointed as it was tamer than I expected. I had expected girls in the windows doing various dodgy and disturbing things, but it was more like an interactive 3D catalogue of who you would want to buy for 15 minutes or an hour. We passed and headed to find some proper nightlife and a few more beverages.
Sunday morning, we treated ourselves to some delicious Dutch pancakes before heading back to
Some will get this..........
Wacky inflatable flailing arm flailing tube man! the pub for some more football and beer. Due to the freezing weather, this was basically our day and on the Monday we headed to the Anne Frank museum, which for those of you who have read the book or watched the movie, it was a fairly moving experience.
And our final act of Amsterdam, was to finally head to a coffee shop to try some ‘space cakes’, which really did absolutely nothing and we flew the normal way back to the Motherland, and back to work, and survive the last few weeks of the year before I am off again to Paris for New Years. Already looking forward to it!
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