...you know what they put one fries in Amsterdam?... Mayonaise... I seen'em drown'em in that shit, man... Amsterdam, home to Van Gogh, Rembrandt. bicycles, windmills, wodden shoes, dikes, and Vincent Vegga's mayonaised fries. Oh ya; legalized drugs and prostitution too. Hard to forget that one. So here is what was seen and done: Van Gogh Museum, Heineken Experience, Anne Frank's house, Red Light District, Yellow Bike tour of countryside, and visited some cafe's and mushroom shoppes. Its hard to describe Dutch. The sound of it is so foreign. But if they speak slowly and if you see i [View Full Entry]

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I decided it would be fun to join Liz, David and Julian in the tulip-filled country of Holland for a conference on DNA Repair. Unfortunately, due to the late spring, there were no tulips to be found. Just fields of stems and buds waiting to open. I did feel sorry for the bus loads of tourists on their tulip-viewing holidays - apparently the flowers are usually guaranteed in April. There were, however, plenty of clogs and other 'dutch' goodies in the conference shop, as you can see in my picture with Liz. The week consisted of lots of talks, viewing posters, [View Full Entry]

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I am now at the end of my travels before arriving in the UK. Mandy and I were in Amsterdam for only 4 days but i great 4 days it was. We mainly stayed in the city centre and shopped till we dropped. When we arrived we had nowhere to stay and tramped around for most of the day trying to find a place to stay, the problem waa, it was Easter weekend so everything was booked. We finaly found a place but only for one night so the next day we had to try find another place to stay. By [View Full Entry]

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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, [View Full Entry]

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We stayed in Cairo for 3 or 4 days just getting ready to end our trip. It sounds funny, but its true. All of our old clothes, the ones we used for backpacking, had to go and we needed to find replacements and warm clothes for Europe. We also visited the Citadel and the famous Muhammad Ali mosque, the street of the tent makers and finally got to see the mass at the hanging church in coptic cairo. The previous time we had gone to coptic cairo we actaully visited a greek orthodox church, which we thought was the hanging church. [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone, Im in Amsterdam and loving it. No Im not high. Well I dont think so. Its so hard to tell the difference over here. Its hippie paradise. The town is crazy. Went on a bike tour out to the countryside to see some farmlands, dikes, and windmills. And windy it was. A couple of times we almost got blown off the bike trail into the canals. Not good. But we toughed it out. It was only a six hour ride:(. That should just about cover my exercise for the month. Cant believe how hard it is to speak Dutch, [View Full Entry]

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Hey guys, I'm in Holland. Sorry no photos anymore :( Nevermind, I will show them all to you when I get back home. I've been going to work with Mario, driving around in his truck seeing lots of Holland and taking plenty of photos. We went to an amusement park it was quiet so Mario and I rode the roller coaster for over an hour without getting off. We went to a war museum and later that same day we went and saw the aftermath of celebrations for PSV's championship. These people are Soccer mad! Contiki starts next week I can't [View Full Entry]

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What a place to finish off in the ye olde canal city and home to so many sights including the Anne Frank Haus the red light district and of course those coffee shops. Considering I haven't smoked coffee in years we didn't really jump for joy at that feature but the rest of Amsterdam is an amazing mix of people, sights, history, ladie's in windows, gorgeous canals, windmills, live sex shows and about a million push bikes. So it appeared pushies were the only way to do it and once we negotiated the whole correct side of the road issue we [View Full Entry]

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Ok go to Rotterdam if you want to see some good architecture (some of it's getting a bit dated now) and also if you want to see the most awkard living spaces in the world within the cube houses. Then leave for Amsterdam before you get the letter warning you that the hostel had Legionnaires disease in the air conditioning.....that's not a lie, but we're still here........cough.....cough. [View Full Entry]

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I *Lion* Amsterdam! (Written on May 14 2006) As our last weekend (and first to be entire honest) where the five of us would be together, Allison, Alison, Erin, Andrea and I headed off to Amsterdam for the weekend. As we are all cheap students, we opted for the Eurolines bus instead of the train. The difference? The train would've taken 5 hours and would've cost 150 Euros. The bus took 9 hours and cost 62 Euros. We decided to risk our lives and bladders on the bus and save 100 Euros. Our bus was to leave Paris at 10:15am on [View Full Entry]

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