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Published: November 17th 2006
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After having a great time in Belgium (despite so many people telling us it was not worth a visit), we headed north to The Netherlands. We started in Rotterdam for 5 days, which surprised us by how much it had to offer. After resting the first day, the second we did a self-guided walking tour of the city, checking out the port, buildings with the coolest and most modern architecture of any city I've seen, Chinatown, some parks, a tower, the river and the city. That night found a great Thai/Vietnamese restaurant and ordered things without knowing what they were before continuing on to a little pub called Vitte Ap, or White Ape. Here we met a funny Mancunian (guy from Manchester) who kept buying us drinks all night. Also came across a group of five girls from Melbourne and an American guy who provided a bit of entertainment and made for an all-round good night out.
Next day we indulged our cultural appetite, heading to Rotterdam's best museum and saw works by Van Gough, Magritte and Dali among others. We also tried a fish and chips place where I had something disgusting called 'Kibbeling' which supposedly translates as fish but
Space Invader
There's some artist that travels the world putting these silly tiles in interesting places. I know of at least a few in Perth. Just in case anyone cares... tastes nothing like it.
We spent one night a club called BUMB which was really different to anything I've been to before. It used to be a subway station or tube and was converted into a club, so the whole thing was just a long round room with bars along the side and a dancefloor at one end. This night caused a lot of trouble for Luke the next day who complained all day of a killer headache, not to mention his arm which had recently been administered with a rabies vaccine, so very little was accomplished besides reading and eating.
After feeling like we'd seen enough of Rotterdam we headed to Amsterdam where we were to spend around 8 days and both of us had been fairly miserly the previous week in anticipation of blowing our wad (of cash) in A'Dam. We spent our time there across three different hostels, two different Flying Pig hostels and the Bulldog- both with somewhat of an international reputation. I can tell you that trying to remember exactly what we did in Amsterdam is not the easiest task so it helped writing a few things down while we were there.
The first day
Choc milk update
I've been experimenting with choc milk around the world. I'm even thinking about writing a book on where to and where not to buy it. Two thumbs down for Rotterdam choc milk there we jumped in the deep end, hitting up a few coffeeshops for a smoke, having a few pints during the day, checking out the party area Leidse Plein before ending up at night in the red light district. We caught a sex show at the Moulin Rouge, which had theatre style seating with girls stripping and people having sex on stage. It was quite strange, and we soon learned that Amsterdam doesn't have strip clubs in the classic sense. There are sex shows, as just described, which didn't particularly interest us, and countless prostitutes in windows, which didn't interest us either but nothing in the middle like a normal strip club. In short we weren't particularly impressed by Amsterdam's sex industry.
The other days were remarkably similar to this except at different locations and we only saw one more sex show before giving up. One day we took a free walking tour of the city- in fact it was the same company that took the Berlin one which led to the 6 stitches in my face. It was quite interesting to get the historical background of Amsterdam and learn about the buildings, canals, and the history behind the red
Picasso sculpture
See, I'm not completely uncultured. We go to museums and stuff. light district and the Dutch's liberal attitude to drugs and sex.
We checked out the torture museum after having a smoke but when we walked in we realised that it was mostly just pictures and written descriptions of torture devices so was a little disappointing but still pretty cool.
One of the days we met up with a Dutch guy from Amsterdam who we met at our hostel in Hungary during Sziget festival 3 months earlier. He took us to the best coffeeshop in town, showed us around a little and then took us to a good Irish pub where we spent all afternoon playing pool over a few drinks. He reminded us a lot of Tristen, both the way he looked and acted so we got on quite well.
A few days in, we figured we had to do the tourist thing and take a boat cruise through the canals on the typical, long, flat Amsterdam style boat. I guess its something you have to do but very average. Finished up the day by going on a pub crawl in Leidse Plein, the only area with more pubs than coffeeshops. Ended up being a very messy night and in
Transformers
Me and what I'm guessing is a Deceptacon the end we had to leave before the end coz I was close to getting in a fight with some Canadians.
At some point the next day while just sitting around a pub, Dave Winter - a guy we went to high school with for 5 years, walked in. We were all very surprised to just run into each other randomly like that and we ended up hanging out with him for part of the same pub crawl that night. We caught up again the next day, catching up over a few beers and spliffs.
Another day, we did a tour of the Heineken brewery which took around 3 hours. I don't think they actually brewed beer there anymore but was the site of the old brewery and had lots of exhibits, rides and information, not to mention a few free drinks at the end of the tour. After enjoying a few Heinies, we found a small bar we'd heard about which had the biggest selection of the best beer I've ever had. The bartender really knew his stuff and made some excellent recommendations, and described each brewery and gave background information on the beers. Mostly it was Dutch and
Belgian beers and we stuck mostly to Trapistas (a description reserved for beers brewed by monks in abbeys or monasteries).
We also did a few other wholesome activities such as the Van Gough museum which was very impressive and saw Anne Frank's house where she and her family spent two years in hiding in an anexe behind a store during WWII.
Had a great time there but I think Luke and I both agreed that 8 days was more than enough. From here, Luke and I split up with Luke staying in The Netherlands, and me heading back to the US to relax for a couple weeks.
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blake
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hehe think i have a photo under molly malones aswell