Amsterdam'n

---

Although you haven’t read about it yet, this is my second time in Holland, and indeed Amsterdam. I had so much fun first time around, there were high expectations this time. And while we had a lot of fun, there were definitely a few happenings that none of us saw coming!

Clay, Ange and I booked some last minute flights to Holland to catch up with Leah who had just started her big bus tour around this section of Europe. When we arrived Leah had already started on her pub crawl, so we had to play catch up… in hind sight, a cake for dinner was probably not the best idea, and ended in a black eye, stolen camera, a decent dose of paranoia, and a lot of giggling - mainly on my part.

At one point in the evening, I got a call from Ange which went something along the line of:
A: Clay’s had an accident. There’s blood. He needs to go to hospital!
H: Oh, is it serious?
A: Yes!?! He needs an ambulance!
H: Oh ok. … um so do you want us to come?
A: Yes!!!!!... we’re in McDs
H.: Ok. See you there.

I hung up the phone and turned to Leah to say. “Clay’s had an accident, but I don’t think it’s serious”.

So to sum this up: Clay is bleeding and needs to go to hospital in a foreign speaking country and I’m not sure if it is serious or if they need/want our help…
I think I was enjoying dancing too much at the time?

… I still don’t know how we found the right McDs… There must be at least five in the central city, but we followed out feet and knew when we were at the right place when we found four policemen attending Clay and Ange.
The basic story is: Clay fainted (not that unusual for him) and hit his head on the corner of the table - giving himself a pretty mean black eye. In the mean time, while everyone was attending Clay, some jerk nicked off with their new camera sitting on the end of the table!
Leah and I gasped when we walked in the door to see the big bulge on Clay’s face where his eye used to me. But once I realised he was ok, I found the whole thing quite hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing at him! Haha poor guy.
From this point on you may notice that Clay was omitted from most of the group photos in case he ruined them with his funny eye.

The next day the city was buzzing with people to for the Gay Pride parade, which was floating its way down the main canal on all sorts of flamboyant boats and the like. We watched a few go past, but soon turned into a reoccurring theme, so what better than Dutch Pancakes in Holland!

We spent the afternoon going through Ann Frank’s House. A small annexe, which was home to eight people for two years during World War II. It’s the second time I’ve been through here, and was able to absorb even more this time round. By the time you leave you can’t help but be inspired to know more about all the things that happened during this time, and even more so, humble, that you do even begin to understand what these people went though.

We spent most of the night walking around enjoying the unique vibe of the city, and as we walked I think Leah was more and more convinced that it was her walking that made the world turn hehe. But alas, she was leaving us early the following morning to carry on with her European tour.

Clay, Ange and I had planned to do the free walking tour on Sunday morning, followed by a river cruise (that I never got to do last time - but more about that in my previous blog, which you’ll read about in the future).
Although we looked hard we just couldn’t find where the walking tour started from, not that I was that upset about it, because instead we had a yummy brunch with scones and homemade jam in this cute café. This left the perfect amount of time for us to do our river cruise, which took us out into the port area, and around one of the main canals circumnavigating Amsterdam, and all the cute canal houses - a nice relaxing way to finish our time here!

For me, its another 5 days at work, while leah checks out Berlin and then I'll be seeing her next weekend in Prague!

Check out more Photos

---

Photos

Amsterdam's Canals
Ange, Hannah, Leah

Dinner!
Ange, Hannah & Clay

Nurse Leah
Clay gets looked after while leaning on the offending table

Ouch!
Clay's eye

The Gay Parade
Another flamboyant boat goes past

Dutch Pancakes!
The hardest part was choosing which one to have!

Frozen peas to the rescue!
Clay's eye looked like he was wearing more eye make up than Dame Edna... time for some frozen peas action!

Canal by Night
very pretty!

The 7 Bridges
The most photographed part of Amsterdam's canal, so they tell us... so ya know I was there!

Canal Tour
Clay, Ange, Hanz -> probably the only group photo we let him be in since friday.

Canal Houses
so cool! -> I want to live there!