Advertisement
Amsterdam
Famous for red lights, green leafy substances, canals, windmills, cheese, clogs and tulips. I had quite a few things to see in my short 3 nights in town. So to start with a bang I headed off on the pub crawl with the busabout gang. It was pretty much only busabout people on our pub crawl but we started heading off with our Irish guide to our first pub. We got a free wine/beer and the dancing and general frivolity began. I was ready for a groove so we got our free t-shirts and started to roll! I didn't take my camera so I have taken photos from friends who were there. I ducked out after the 2nd pub for something to eat with a guy I met in the pub. We ended up bipassing the takeaway and eating at a yummy Indian place before rejoining the group at the 3rd pub. There were 6 clubs in total and we stayed til the last pub but by that time I was ready for sleep and so headed through the canals to the market square where we managed to get directions from a police officer.
I had arranged to meet Candra at Kukenhof gardens for my first day, and this proved a challenge after I had gotten home after 2am and had to be up and ready to catch an 8am tram. Amsterdam was already prooving crazy and I hadn't sampled any of its delights! Haha I met Candra's friends Nicola and Larissa and we all headed off to find the tulip gardens. I was extremely excited as my friend Sussan from school had been here back when we were in grade 6 and had shown me pictures and given me windmill earings, which I still wear and I had always wanted to go there and see the tulips fof myself. So it was always going to be an amazing moment to finally tick the gardens off my bucket list. The did not dissapoint in any way at all. From the minute we walked in I was in raptures about everything. Luckily Larissa felt the same way so we bounced off eachother. We spent hours walking the gardens, seeing the different gardens, got yelled at from a random tourist guide to "Get off that Grass", pretty apt considering we were in Amsterdam (pun intended). We also ate taditional dutch desserts, climbed a windmill, got photos in a boat of tulips and listened to the pianola type instrument which was played by puppet statues and as we left was playing lady gaga's bad romance. This was an unexpected delight as it was so at odds with the cute dutch traditional puppets who played their bells. Haha
We finished with a dinner in Jordan, which took me ages to get to as I had tried to take a tram, got lost after the tram driver gave me directions which got me more lost and then I thought I was in the rignt spot until I realised they had moved a church. Haha Or I was still lost...I eventually got there for a yummy tapas meal and then we walked the red light district as I was the only one in the group who had never seen it. It was an experience but left me a little cold as it was degrading. Another tram ride back to the hostel and an extra walk in the dark as I missed my stop...this getting lost is beginning to develop into a habbit!
My last day in Amsterdam began with a bike ride through the city into the outskirts with our completely stoned guide who was definately in his own postcode singing his heart out and blowing bubbles from his bubble maker as he rode. I am not great at riding bikes (I re-learned at christmas time last year after not naving been on a bike since I was about 9), but I enjoy it so I had a few giggles at my take off technique and frequent squeeks as I got nearly run over by cars, trams and other bikes. We left the city to bike along the bigger outer canal on the way out to visit a windmill. I wil I could have taken photos but I was not profficient at riding, let alone riding one handed and taking photos with the other. We took photos at the windmill and then headed to the cheese factory to see a demonstration of how cheese and clogs were made. There were also some dairy cows and calves out the back to cuddle. For the last part of our trip I attempted taking photos while riding - with a little success! There were many photos of smudgy roads/trees that were deleted though! After the tour I wandered the city and ate more waffles and took in the sites before heading to the gardens for a relax and catch up on writing. Dinner at an Irish pub with some new friends from busabout finished off my evening and then we were off in the morning for a 10 hour trio to Berlin! :-)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.323s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 9; qc: 47; dbt: 0.1279s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb