European Getaway - Day 19 - Amsterdam

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Day 19 - Amsterdam

I’m the first to wake up in our room, as this morning we have a cycle tour around Amsterdam, I am quite looking forward to it as I enjoy cycling and this is the cycling capital of the world. I have a cold shower and head down for breakfast. A few of our group are down in the food area, the breakfast is bread, no toasting facilities and no butter. It’s lame, I dunno how they can call this breakfast, anyhow I partake in bread.

I then head outside for the ride, where it is chucking it down, but about a dozen of us brave the rain for our bike ride, which didn’t cost anything extra. Our guide gives us a bike and waterproof jacket, which I decide not to use, as it looks a bit crap. The bike is crazy as the handlebars are so high. My bike has a Winnie the Pooh bell on it, which impresses me. Our tour guide seems to be a bit high on weed, even at this time on the morning. We begin our ride and we realise how crazy the traffic is, although there are cycle lanes everywhere. It’s crazy trying to watch out for cars, other cyclists, trams and pedestrians. We ride through a park which is much safer, and fun. We all take out our cameras and try taking shots whilst riding. Some great photo’s to stick on facebook. We then take in a few sites and arrive at the huge sign that says I Amsterdam. We all take photos in front of it.

We then head back to the hostel, it has been a fairly short ride but I really enjoyed it, however I appreciate that some of my friends may have not, given that not everyone is as confident on a bike as me, and the weather was dreadful.

As I arrive back I bump into Mel and Mel, they were meant to be rooming with Annaliese and Lucy, but they didn’t arrive back last night and got worried, clearly I know where they were and the Mel’s followed me back to my room. This caused a huge argument and I feel like shit as I get on with all of them and feel like I caused the row.

I tag along with the two Mel’s, Brendan, Tammy, Josh and Jess, who decide to get breakfast elsewhere, so we all have toasties and coffee. The waitress was particularly rude so we didn’t leave her much of a tip. We head down the main shopping street and myself and Josh eventually lose all the girls to the shops. I am keen to buy a Ajax football shirt but the cheapest price I have seen is £70, which is expensive. We head to the dam (the main square) and decide to go and visit the sex museum. On the way I grab a Lion flavoured McFlurry, we don’t get that flavour in Britain and I must say it was pretty good.

At the sex museum we bump into John, Ryan and Paul (somehow I think all the perverts ended up in the sex museum). The museum contains loads about the history of sex and porn. There are some moving exhibitions which show various sexual acts. The highlight of the museum was a bench of three seats set between two giant penis’s (is that a term, or is the plural peni), John, Paul and Ryan decide to use the bench, however the middle seat has some form of dildo under the cushion which thrusts when someone sits on it, poor John gets a right shock.

After the sex museum myself and Josh do a bit of shopping, have a general walk around and end up back at the red light district. I was amazed as I always thought that the ladies of the night were indeed that, however the windows were open for business in the daytime. The quality of the ladies however was not as good as last night, there are some pretty rough looking ladies.

We head back to the hostel early and all my roommates are back in the room. Paul is pretty ill, I would assume due to his activities last night, however a number of people on the tour are also ill. Tonight we have our end of tour meal, followed by a boat cruise optional, which we are told is actually pretty much mandatory.

We pop down to the bar for a drink before going out and it is happy hour, so I get a pint of coke for €1.20 which is pretty cool. We then take a huge walk (like 40 mins) to the restaurant, which is called the Sea Palace. It is a Chinese restaurant which is on a boat, in the river. The boat however is like four floors high. We are on the top floor and have an amazing view over the dock. Across the dock there is a building hich looks like The Deep in Hull (in England).

The food is brought out on big dishes for each table and we all tuck in. As I don’t normally eat this sort of food I’m a bit nervous but take a bit of everything, I have noodles, sweet and sour pork, chicken in some form of sauce and the veg accompanying it. The meal is quite nice. After the meal a large number of the group want to go back to the hostel as they are feeling ill. Although I feel sorry for all the people going home, missing out on our last night, I’m a bit gutted as many of the people I have hung around with a fair bit on the tour (such as Annaliese, Lucy, Nicole, Kat, Jaala and Tahlia) are part of the 'ill crew' and tonight was meant to be the big fairwell party. Oh well it’s still the final night, therefore party on.

We head outside to catch our boat, and then we have a party on the boat. The bar on the boat is free (although we did pay for the boat, so not actually free) and the music is very cheesy, my favourite. The night is great and I have a few beers, chat with loads of people and of course have a good dance to classics such as Locomotion and the ketchup song (which my mexican friends know the words to..as the majority of it is in Spanish). It’s a bit sad that tonight is the last night, I have grown to love these people so much, I’ve come out of my shell so much on this trip and have realised that all these people actually enjoy spending time with me.

After the boat trip we are lead to another bar, where we continue the party. There is another topdeck group in the bar and everyone is having fun. We stay there for a while and they play a number of the dance tunes which have been sort of signature tunes for our trip, and have followed us around Europe, such as Dynamite by Taio Cruz and No Getting Over You by David Guetta. The tour leader from the other group does some fire breathing which is impressive, however he seems to be a bit of a dick, clearly Jess is miles better than him.

Afterwards we head back towards the hostel, however being the last night I can’t go without a Maccers, given it is just a few hundred yards from the hostel, so I head there with the 3 kiwi girls on tour, Yvette, Kit and Nat. We sit inside and have lovely chat about the trip and stuff. We then head back to the hostel, on the way passing a store called Auckland, New Zealand, with an NZ flag in the window. Clearly we couldn’t let this opportunity pass so I had to take a photo of my Kiwi friends.

When we get back to the hostel I head straight to bed. This has been a good night out, although was a bit gutting everyone wasn’t there.

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