After a good night's rest, we load our staff to the car and set off to cross the German boarders and find ourselves in Amsterdam! Of course, when I say "cross boarders" I am simply using an expression, you see, there are no boarders!! The road simply takes you from one country to the other and if it hadn't been for our friends GPS, we would still be driving in search of Holland!!
The trip was short and relaxing. Hitler did cause tremendous suffering, but when it comes to roads, he must've been the "go to" man, as they have preserved his original road network: full of straight roads that perish in the horizon except for the times when you have to make a severe course changes ie.from North to West etc.. There are also no toll stations anywhere in Germany so the car flow is constant and undisturbed (save for the many speed radars that is...) but petrol is rather steep!
After about 3 hours drive, we were there! We found our hostel, we chose Flipper and it was a good choice too (cheap + clean, my favourite combination) left our bags and set off to explore Amsterdam. We parked the car and decided to give the local transportation a go. We did good. The tram station was pretty close and in about 10' you're downtown!!
Due to our rather late arrival we decided to do much of our sightseeing the following day. Still, when in Dam Square, there are a lot of inviting things to do. We had lunch at one of the dozens of restaurants on Spui Street, walked up and down the pedestrian streets full of shops and ending up back at Dam Square, we thought we should give Madam Tussuad's a go. The ticket was rather steep, about 20Eur but that gets you a box of souvenir cards from MT and about an hour and a half among wax celebrities and a small "house of horror", the theme being the Pirates of the Caribbean. That was more interesting rather than scary as the wax dummies were accompanied by standing perfectly still actors who suddenly came to live when you walked passed them. There was also a karaoke corner and some other interactive games as well as a gift shop.
Next stop: coffee shops...what else? We chose the Bulldog Coffee Shop chain and I believe we did good. Coffee shops are nothing like what I expected them to be. I guess I was expecting dirty places full of zombies that spend their day chasing the dragon on the same chair. I couldn't be further from the truth.
Coffee shops are very nicely decorated, welcoming and relaxing places. People going in are middle aged, teenagers, professionals, tourists, groups, singles and to put it in one word EVERYBODY! You can only have a coffee as in, you don't HAVE to buy staff but it's just that, well, that's the main reason to there in the first place. There is usually a basement where you can pick a variety of staff and then take it upstairs to smoke it along with a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate!
It was so funny. You see, we had no idea how things worked and when entering the coffee shop and seeing everybody puffing away and no actual selling post, we called the waiter to ask where we can buy some staff. The thing is that our friend asked "do you have any cigarettes in here?" meaning staff and so the waiter replies "by cigarettes you mean drugs? cause you shouldn't be ashamed, I'm a drug dealer, that's what I do" and he said that in the most casual way...!What a shock that was for us, coming from little Greece, where everything is illegal and everybody hides...
He directed us to the basement, where we selected something light for the occasion and went upstairs to have it. Good thing is they also had rolled joints ready to use so we didn't have to worry about rolling. We bought a pack of 4 Polms for the price of 12Eur which was quite decent in price and quality.
We laughed the rest of the night away........
