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Published: February 19th 2008
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Our start in Amsterdam went very well. Not only did we get to our hostel in no time (due to our slightly scarily speeds of 140km/h, courtesy of our airport taxi driver) but our hostel was lovely and big and the 6 of us girls had a room to ourselves!
In order to waste no time, we hit the happy hour in the hostel and then walked an agonising 40 minutes in the complete wrong direction to the city. After much debate and map reading, we ended up catching a taxi straight to the red light district. Now just some background information for those who may not know. Amsterdam is famous for its red light district, which is a series of narrow lanes filled with prostitutes offering themselves from windows illuminated by neon lights. As well as this sex shops, sex shows and coffee shops line the streets. Unfortunately, legislation is coming in July to ban the use of windows as selling tools, already one third of windows have been removed from this district. So really we figured that we had to make the most of what this part of Amsterdam had to offer, and wandered down the streets filled
The harbour
The sunken looking ship is actually a science museum with mainly tourists taking in the unfamiliar scene. As it was night and freezing temperatures we figured the most sensible thing to do would be to go inside somewhere. As we were in the area, our best option was a place called ‘Cassa Rossa’ which offered us a free drink and continuous sex shows till 2am. I will not go into detail as to what we saw but it was quite an experience, especially seeing that two of the girls got pulled onto the stage....
The next morning we were very excited to find that our hostel provided a full on buffet breakfast which meant we stuffed ourselves silly and sneaked out several pieces of bread and chocolate sprinkles for our lunches. With the proper directions and the sun streaming down, we decided to tackle the walk to the city again. This was actually a beautiful walk; we followed a large canal which emerged into a larger harbour with numerous boats and buildings surrounding the edges. To gauge the full extent of the canals immersed within Amsterdam, we took a tour boat highlighting the various historic bridges, houses and building. The boat was in extreme contrast to the 2
degree weather outside as the glass plane roof and windows acted like a green house and in 15 minutes I was almost asleep. However our priority mode of transport was to change and so as soon as we got off the boat we all hired bikes. Due to the many bike friendly paths, bikes are the main mode of transport for the Dutch and bicycles cram every street. Even with these so called ‘friendly’ bike paths, we had a little trouble not only navigating the busy city streets but riding on the other side of the road. Our first stop was Anne Frank’s house and luckily for the five of us riding bikes we all arrived there in one piece. Anne Frank’s house is the original house that Anne and her family hid in during the Jewish persecution during World War II. It has been made beautifully into a museum taking you through the family’s story and their experiences room by room. With true artefacts from the time, and videos explaining what the Frank’s went through, it was quite a poignant experience and well worthwhile.
We decided to leave some more cultural things to do for the next few
days and decided to check out the Coffee shops we have heard so much about. Whilst waiting on our bikes for the others to head to the famous ‘Grasshopper’ coffee shop, Caz and I were shocked into reality when a group of girls came up to us and pulled Caz’s glasses off her face and walked away. Not having any of this Caz, hopped onto her bike and wobbled over to the girls accidently shouting “give me back my bike!... uhh I mean glasses, give them back!”. Seeing that Caz was in trouble, I dropped my bike with Jess and ran over to the scene. The next few moments involved Caz and I scrambling and trying to snatch the glasses back whilst slowly being surrounded by the girls. However due to our persistence we finally got the glasses and ran away holding on tight to the rest of our belongings. Anyway the coffee shop calmed us down a bit and this proved to be also quite an experience and after several hours we emerged ready to hit another sex show, which was then followed by another coffee shop.
The next morning we set off on our bikes straight to
the Rijks (Rye-ks) Museum. The building was absolutely huge and beautiful and filled with paintings of Dutch artists. This included many paintings by Rembrandt, Karel du Jardin and my favourite Vermeer who did ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ which much to my dismay wasn’t there. After this we couldn’t resist going into another Coffee Shop and trying what looked like a delicious chocolate muffin called a ‘space cake’. Any way the next few hours kind of merged together and then it was suddenly time to return our bikes. Due to safety precautions we ended up walking our bikes for 40 minutes to the shop and then overcome with tiredness we caught a taxi home and napped till dinner, ate and then went straight to bed again.
Unfortunately the others had an early morning flight home while Caz and I had all day till we left. After gorging ourselves again at the buffet breakfast, Caz and I headed into the city on another beautiful day. Our first stop was the famous Sex Museum which displayed numerous sex related photos, artworks and other items dating back to the 1980s. So basically a lot of people doing somewhat rather vulgar things to
each other, however interesting nonetheless. After this we strolled to the main square which was filled with beautiful old buildings and a squillion of tourists. However Caz and I found a nice place outside to drink tea and basked in the sun till it got to cold. Determined to see some more of Amsterdam we walked down to the Van Gough Museum and were slightly disappointed after paying $17 and only recognising one or two of Van Gough’s paintings. However the walk there was beautiful and we found a very tasty looking place serving pofertjes (small pancakes drowned in butter) which really made our day. We then realised we had nothing to do to kill the next 4 hours till our plane left and so wondered the streets till it was so cold it was impossible to walk outside for more than 5 minutes and subsequently bar hopped our way to the train station.
Regardless of the freezing weather we were blessed to have sunshine all weekend and great company! It really is a fun city, I had a great weekend.
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