Amsterdam

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April 15th 2006

Published: June 7th 2006

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Bikes in the Park

Sonja, Francine and I

The long awaited Amsterdam. Apologies for the severe delay. As those of you who spoke to me at the time will know, I enjoyed Amsterdam immensely. I do recall before I left the Ministry of Education another Taranaki lass telling me to “go to Amsterdam! Don’t go to London, it’s horrible… go to Amsterdam!” At the time I didn’t realise that she was in fact sharing pearls of wisdom. However, can’t cry over spilt milk and all of that. I don’t imagine Amsterdam would have been so easy to get a job.

I went with a group of 7 others. Sonja, Francine and Marcel from New Plymouth and the rest were their friends. This was Sonja and Francine’s 3rd trip to Amsterdam (they love it there) and they were great to go with seeing as they knew pretty much where to go and what to do.

I arrived a night earlier and caught up with the couple that I house sit for in London. Had a rather unique clubbing experience, between that and the red light district I was certainly left in no doubt of where Amsterdam gets the reputation from.

Hiring bikes was definitely the highlight, they

Bikes in the park

have the funkiest bikes I have seen. A huge number of funky bikes… I knew there were bikes in Amsterdam, but I had no idea that there were actually that many. It made me laugh because I realised that the ‘creeps’ that we used to know in Hamilton are just living the life of Amsterdam but in Hamilton and without the clogs. Old school bikes and lots of pot, who knew.

Ann Frank’s house was sad, as I expected it would be. Didn’t manage much else in the way of sight seeing, but the city itself is so amazing and so unique that sitting in cafés is possibly the best sight seeing anyway. The canals were very beautiful, and I have never seen so many narrow and steep stairways in my life. Lolly and cake stores everywhere… how unusual. I only just worked out in the UK that they don’t call them lollies, they call them sweets. I had wondered why everyone said no when I offered lollies, but when I showed them the bag of lollies they said yes. It is because they thought I was offering them lollypops.

So not very interesting I am afraid, but

Street

definitely the best city I have been to so far. As per usual I plan on going back there… perhaps I should keep and eye our for English speaking PR jobs.

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