Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2014
Edit Blog Post
As we are writing this we are on the train to Berlin, having spent a great 3 nights in Amsterdam.
We arrived on Tuesday, around midday, feeling that the journey had gone very quickly, only to find a 2 hour queue for reserving seats on the train journey we are currently on. However, once that was out of the way, we made our way to the Hans Brinker Budget Hostel, self-declared 'worst hotel in the world'. In fact it was perfect for what we needed, clean, relatively comfortable beds, big lockers to store our bags, and a quite tasty free breakfast. It's 'anti-advertising' posters were a source of amusement for us each day.
After dropping off our bags, we decided to go and explore the city, we wandered around for hours, going in and out of shops, along the canals, and generally getting a feeling for the city, plus we found good size pizzas for only €5 each! The next day we woke up relatively early and meandered through the streets until we arrived at the national monument, the meeting point for the 'free' walking tour that had been advertised to us. We were well
aware that tips were heavily encouraged, but in the end, Kendra more than earned the €5 we gave her. The tour was interesting and informative throughout, and we enjoyed it greatly; we were guided through the red light district, to the Old Church, found out that prostitution was only made legal in Amsterdam in this century, and that weed is still not legal, just ignored as long as it isn't too overtly advertised. Leading to an explanation of the difference between a cafe and a coffee shop! At one stage of the tour, we went through an innocuous doorway, and ended up inside Begijnhof, a former convent from the 14th century, it's peaceful atmosphere was in stark contrast to the busy streets of the red light district around it. The small houses there are generally reserved for single elderly women who worked for the Church. It also contained one of the 'secret' Catholic churches which were formed when Catholicism was banned, but tolerated by the authorities as they were funded by wealthy Catholics.
That evening we decided to visit the Anne Frank House, as it was quite late, and rain was drizzling down, we hoped that the
queue would not be too bad, but it soon became apparent that we weren't the only people who had that idea! So after 1.5 hours we made our way inside. We emerged an hour later, having just had enough time to take in all that there was to see before it closed at 10pm. Chelsea picked out the diary quotes on the walls as the element which brought the house to life for her, while I found that the small hidden entrance to the annex, was what made it more real. Needless to say it was a special experience that was worth a long wait in the rain. Although it would have been nice if our friends and family who had been there before would have told us that you can book a time slot a month or so in advance and then not have to queue at all!
Afterwards, our plan was to find something to eat, and then walk through the red light district on our way back to the hostel. However, about an hour later, we realised that we were definitely not going in the right direction, and basically didn't have a clue where
we were. We followed signs for the station, but that only seemed to get us more lost, when we eventually realised roughly where we had gotten to, and that we were going to have to walk all the way back, combined with the fact that all the restaurants we saw had already closed, Chelsea became a little hysterical, crouching down and sobbing/laughing in the middle of the street. We made no further wrong turns after this, but it was long gone midnight when we found ourselves back in the city centre. Chelsea, unable at this point to speak in more than excited syllables, began pointing and babbling 'muh muh muh' and as I followed her gaze and saw the warm glow of the golden arches that signalled our salvation. Two big mac meals later, and we were sufficiently recovered to take a brief stroll through the red light district, which was now in full swing, and we walked through with our eyes on stalks!
Our final day started off heavy on culture, we ventured down to the Rijksmuseum and took an audio headset tour of the museum, which guided us around and gave an interesting spiel about
some of the highlights that the museum had to offer. We tried to look at everything there was to see, although we were tiring by the end, having spent 3 hours inside. Particular highlights for us included the statues in the Asian Pavilion, the massive dollhouses, commissioned for as much as the cost of a real house at the time, as well as a Monet painting, and one of Van Gogh's famous self-portraits.
We then took a stroll though Vondelpark, wishing we had brought our lunch with us, it was beautiful and quite peaceful, although very busy, and we enjoyed relaxing by the side of one of the small lakes there, although Chelsea was upset to find she had sat on some bird poo! After the park, we went back to the hostel for lunch and a rest.
Chelsea thought it would be a nice idea to take a picture by the Amsterdam sign, like the tourists we are, so we looked up where it was, only to find that it was just on the other side of the Rijksmuseum where we had been that morning! Nevertheless, we walked down there and took some photos and ate a waffle (an ambition of Chelsea's since we walked past a waffle shop on our first day), it was delicious.
Since our first day, we had planned to do something on the canals, and the pedalos caught my eye as something fun to do. After a brief debacle, with a woman trying to guilt us out of our boat, we set off fairly unsteadily. It soon became apparent that Chelsea was the better natural steerer, but was too easily distracted to hold a course for very long, this resulted in many spins and at one point a large tour boat having to bump us out of its way! We got quite lost, finding dead ends, and ending up on a one-way canal, with not long left before we had to return our pedalo. We sped up a bit and made it back to one of the drop off points with seconds to spare, after messing up the original turn, I was complimented on my excellent reversing back into the dock, which gave a very false impression of my competence at the rudder.
We finished the evening with a visit to one of the cities famous coffee shops, after which we went back over to the red light district and sat down on the side of the canal for a while.
We had a great time in Amsterdam, and we haven't killed each other yet, bring on Berlin!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.256s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0914s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Corey
non-member comment
Chelsea and Tom
Brilliant blog guys keep it up ?