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Published: March 19th 2005
Cycling
Did I mention it was pretty cold?Ok, now Mum - I don't want you to panic.... :-)
Today's been a huge day - we were all up bright and early this morning to head off on a bicycle ride through the village of Edam (just outside Amsterdam). Thankfully the entire country is quite flat so the ride wasn't too taxing - although a fairly large group of us did manage to get lost for a little while...
After that it was off to see how cheese and clogs are made, and most importantly, sample some of the local cheeses (mmm, I LOVE Edam cheese). Soon after we were dropped in the city of Amsterdam to fend for ourselves for the day. We'd already had a bit of a glimpse of the place last night when we went on a canal cruise and saw some of the city from the water - lots of fun! Today Luke and Aaron (and the rest of us too) were keen to check out the Heinaken (I really should be able to spell that!) brewery tour. It was lots of fun - quite interactive. After the tour I decided to wander off by myself and check out the van Gough
Clogs
...and lots of them! museum. The other's weren't too keen to see it so the plan was for me to call luke's mobile when I was ready to meet up with them again.
The van Gough musemum was fantastic - I'm really glad I went. I was a bit rushed cos I also wanted to get to see the Anne Frank house before it closed, so I probably didn't get as much out of the audio commentary as I could have, but I really enjoyed it anyway. After I'd done with developing an appreciation for van Gough, I walked to the other end of Amsterdam (which it turns out, is actually a fairly small city geographically) and saw the house Anne Frank and her family hid in during the war. The place is TINY - very claustrophobic on the narrow, steep staircases.
At this point I decided to call luke and meet up with the others for dinner...and spent AGES trying to find a payhone without success. In the end a nice gentleman directed me to a place where I could go to make the call...unfortunately I couldnt (and still cant) get an answer so I guess I just find them back
Frites & Cheese
Ok, I don't like mayo, so I figured cheese was a good option. I've *never* seen such orange cheese in my life. at the hotel. I've had a few hours to kill, so I've been wandering about Amsterdam. The tour guide tells us its quite safe, although I have to admit I didn't feel incredibly safe wandering through the red light district looking like a total tourist - complete with backpack and camera over my shoulder!
I have sampled some of the local cuisine - Frites (chips) with this cheddar cheese sauce which is like maccas cheese melted down. It wasnt too bad, but the sauce got kinda sickly after a while. I also found a nice cafe (avoiding 'coffee' shops - which are actually the place where you go to smoke dope or partake of magic mushrooms - all completely legal here) and probably took the record for the longest time to drink a latte.
Not sure what to do next - I'm killing some time on the net right now, but the contiki bus doesn't come to pick us up and take us back to the hotel for another 2 hours. The'red light'area is so depressing - I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to see it, but its such a big part of Amsterdam I wanted to understand
The Grasshopper
The infamous gateway to Amsterdam's red light district what it was really like. But yeah, its just sad to see people being degraded like that. Even if its legal, it just seems wrong for women to be in windows waiting to be sold like a pair of shoes. Amsterdam by night seems like a different city to during the day time. The 'coffee' houses really come alive after it gets dark, and you can smell the pot in the air as you walk past (or as patrons walk past you!). There are heaps of fast food places open too - not really surprising I guess!
Tomorrow we're off to Germany, and hopefully I'll get a chance to send the couple of post cards I've written so far - I had some trouble today trying to find a post office (ie it was closed). Everyone here speaks reasonably good English which is so helpful, although it makes me feel like a complete bum 'cos I don't know anything other than English!
Oh - a few more obscure things I forgot to mention...yesterday we were stopped at something like a service centre so the bus driver could have a break and we discovered we had to pay a guy to use the toilets. Fortunately my intrepid adventurer friend Liz had warned me about this - the somewhat disturbing part was that when I left the cubicle the guy was wandering around the ladies restroom spraying something smelly (strong too) and he even re-flushed my toilet!
The trip from from England to France yesterday was slightly different to planned. As the tour guide guy put it 'the French are being French and the English are being English' - leading to a strike on the docks. So we took the channel tunnel (aka "chunnel") where they loaded the bus onto this train which was like just a really long empty tunnel. Then we had to stay on the bus while the train took us (and lots of other cars and busses) through the tunnel. Quite odd.
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anonymous
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I have an open invitation to go on a bike ride for over a year in Sydney and yet no effort made and plenty of excuses....yet the first thing you do when you get over there is to go for a bike ride! - Paul Strecker