AMSTERDAM

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I got up and was banging around as loud as I could to try and disturb the punk below me!! He deserved it I should have made his morning an absolute hell but he just kept sleeping. HAHA whatever I was up now and ready to make the most of my day in Amsterdam. Had a shower and shaved my hairy face. ThiS chick stole the shower from me when I had my stuff inside. One of those Latino chicks. I thought weed smokers were supposed to be friendly happy go lucky type people!! Anyways I got in the shower just as some other guy was trying to get in front of me. Had my shower which was something I didnt have access to much lately. You know when you just have to have a shower and it feels so good after. This was one of those times. Felt refreshed after that.
It was like 1020 and I had to make my way just down a few alleys back to the main train station where we were to meet for the tour. The girls were gonna meet me downstairs but they never showed up!! Typical eh haha. SO i ventured out found a coffee shop and they didnt have to go cups so i couldnt get a coffee but I could get weed if I wanted. I wanted. I tried a small bit of bubblegum for now which was 10 Euro so like 15 Canadian. He gave me rollies and cardboard for the filter. Well the rollies were bigger than the size of my finger and I didnt want to blow it all in one. Thats way too wasteful. SO i thought about my options as I walked to the station desperately trying to locate a coffee or some nutrition other than the green stuff. I found an Illy coffee shop and got myself a coffee which was all I needed. AHHHHHHHHHHh the fix
Got to the station ON TIME!!! YAH ME its like the first time. Looked around for someone interesting to chat with. Not too many interesting characters here. As we started walking with the group I met an Aussie girl who wasnt even with the group just walking beside us coming from the train station. Enjoy the tour she says as we parted.
We got to this square in the heart of Amsterdam and met up with even more people. There must have been over 200 ppl around there.They had tours in other languages, I think this one only had Spanish and English. I started chatting with this guy who looked like he was on his own. His name was Marc and,he was from Georgia, but he didnt have much of an accent oddly enough. He was wearing a plumbing company hat and I asked him about that. It was his dads company he just graduated from school doing something like civil engineering. The tour began and I could tell these two girls didnt know what to do. The guy who brought us here told us just to wait here. THere was multiple tours going around town. This was the same company that I had done a few tours with already. THe tour started and it turns out the guys from Toronto. Just living here for a 3 month exchange or something.He started to give us a bit of a history lesson on the Dutch. He told us how most tourists mistake Amsterdam for a country. The Dutch really dont like that much. He told us the three rules that the Dutch live life by. They dont mind if you break the law as long as you. #1 Be dicreet. Dont be an idoit if your gonna break the law and be obvious about it. My dad pretty much taught me that when I was younger anyway!! #2 Dont hurt anyone else in the process. Makes sense dont let your stupidity effect others. And finally #3 Be profitable about it. Income is a good thing. Amsterdam alone brings in around 3 Billion a year in tourist money from all of the crazy things you can do there. He told us about the periods of time when Britain and France fought over control of Holland. The Dutch never had names before. The French wanted to be able to recognize them by name so they pretty much enforced it. They came up with the some really funny names like Long dick fucker and dirty sorts of names. This actually stuck as well. TO this day you can find ppl in the phone book called Asshole and things like that we were told. I must check on this!!
We set off from the main square and walked the central core of Amsterdam learning more and more about the history of the town. Amsterdam had the worlds first Corporation organized and ran here. It was to market trade to and from the West Indies. Buisiness owners were getting sick of loosing the whole shipment of goods and the ship so they decided to team up and have 6 different investors with 6 different ships share the profit amongst each other and losses as well. Pretty smart actually and it paid off big time. This is also where Im told is the worlds first stock market. He told us about Prostutution and how everyone is in a union and how it works. He even told us how much it would be. 50 Euros to start he said and can go anywhere from there!! The oldest stripper in Amsterdam is something like 65 years old. I think its even against the rules but shes been around awhile. She is supposedly one of the more busy with quite the clientele that have some sort CREEPY fetish. HE took us a ton of places and it would take me days to write this entry if i tried to remember all of them, but it was very interesting. I saw this cool looking bike on the way down the canal and took a pic of it. Its wheels were super close together id never seen one like it. Homeade maybe. I take the pic and this guy behind me says to me I made that bike with my own hands. Well I saw some girl park it a couple mins before I took the pic so I was curious. He starts giving me this display on the bike and riding it around doing stunts. It was 2 wheel drive even. Crazy cool bike. The tour was going on at the same time and they left before he was done talking about it. I didnt want to get left behind but I told him how cool the bike was and said I have to leave nice to meet you and that was it.
Caught back up at the Marijuana and Hemp museum. Ha that was pretty sweet. I started talking with this girl up front and the Canadian guide. The girl turns out to be from Quebec as well so it was pretty cool. She told me about her bday party the night before and being a bit hungover this morning. We ended up talking most of the tour and decided to hang out afterwards. We ended the tour at Anne Franks house right by the HUGE ass que as the rest of the world call it. I would say it was a big ass line up. Marc wanted to go to a cafe so that was pretty much the plan after the 3.5 hr tour. We followed the rest of what was left of the group and the guide to a cafe just up the road. I had to get some change to give him for the tour. Well it turns out there is a big difference in the word CAFE and COFFEE SHOP in Holland. There was no weed at this cafe so why were we going again!!! HAHAHA We said thanks for the tour and took off. On the way we ran into this cool little shop and looked around a bit. Then we hung out by the canal and relaxed. It was so sunny I felt like jumping into the canal, but its definetly not very clean looking. Supposedly they pump the canal out with sea water every 3 days we learnt on the tour. OH yah and the other funny story we learnt on the tour was that ppl just randomly throw bikes into the canal if there not locked to anything. There is a barge that even drives the canals and scales the bottom to pick up the bikes. Sometimes even cars wind up there as there isnt much of a median from keeping this from happening on most of the roads.
We walked around the whole day glassy eyed. IT was WICKED. Tons of parks and sights. My plan was to check out the Van GOgh museum and hopefully visit. We got close but never made it. We wandered around town and went to this place called the Bulldog. Marc bought a crayon pack of Joints all different flavours. We went back to the hostel after that and I moved my pack to his room where he said I could keep it for the night. I was thinking of just going to the pub crawl and staying out all night instead of paying for a room. I looked into how much it would be and it was like 30 euros cause alll the cheap beds were gone. NOPE not doing it. So I kept the pack on his bed and figured I could just convince him staying out all night or grab it and store it at the station if needed. Sabrina the french chick wanted to transfer some pics over to her usb stick so I offered to use my comp. Well turns out she never transfered them properly and all of sudden chaos broke out. Especially french girls eh. They like to trantrum so we tried to be supportive and keep positive about it. I was like just get in touch with the computer place that you transfered them from. HA long shot but who knows. If its everything to you, might as well try. She had to leave to have a smoke. We stayed inside and didnt really know what to do. When this kind of thing happens to me I just say to myself. Well nothing you can do it about now i just have to try an move on. Some people are more emotional then others.
We tried to make her feel better and it seemed to work abit. We went out for a bite to eat. Had some crappy sandwhich that was expensive. The others got some Chineese Food. Supposedly Indonesian was really good here and I wanted to try that but we couldnt agree on a place. We met up with Sabrinas roomates here. They were pretty cool. Went to a coffeeshop after that and tried a Brownie. Werent very cheap at all. I had a coffee with it. I think the pub crawl just started which was suprisingly early so I figured I might be able to catch up. MAYBE! After the cafe we went to the big square again and said goodbye to the two roomies going back to the hostel which was supposedly eons away from the center. Sabrina hung out for a bit longer then we said goodbye to her as well. I got a big speel about sending her these pics. She wanted to remember this and her camera stopped working awhile back. We went back to the Hostel because Marc was being gay and wanted to sleep. Ha had to get my bag and take it to the station now. So went upstairs and met his roomates who chatted for abit and then I said PEACE! Went downstairs and sat on the internet for abit. It was like 1am ish. It was a bar as well so I figured they would be open for awhile still. Well they kicked me out after they realized I wasnt sleeping there tonight. HAHA i sat on the bridge for abit on the interent and then went off to get some munchies. Good old chicken wings and fries P90 alright. Yum
Walked to the station and grabbed a locker. The first train out to Paris was gonna be around 7 so I had a few hours to go.
I plugged in the laptop around 3ish and started writing. Asshole security dick came around and made me unplug it. Kinda funny that they wouldnt let me plug in my laptop. I caught a few hours sleep on a few chairs for abit. NIGHT NIGHT

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Photos

Just outside hostel
Bridge is the highest elevation in AMsterdam at 5m above sea

street art
coping a feel