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The Beautiful City of Sin
Entry 29 of 54 | show all | print this entry |
Our "overnight" train to Amsterdam turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. We think the ticket seller in Copenhagen got the best of us. We somehow ended up in first class, which was nice but explains why our reservation, not ticket, cost 75 a piece. We also didn´t end up in Amsterdam, we ended up in Duisburg, Germany and had to wait 3 hours at 6am for a train to Amsterdam because the Copenhagen guy didn´t book a reservation for us on the 6:30am train to Amsterdam. Score. All I have to say is thank God we were in first class, cause I wouldn´t of gotten any sleep and would of been super grumpy in Duisburg. The train sleeper cars are real nice, you have your own little room with a sink, and there is a shower that you can use. I discovered a new challenge in life: trying not to fall in the shower while the train is moving. I succeeded, but my soap did not, it was rolling around everywhere.
We eventually got to Amsterdam and found our budget hotel quite quickly. All the hostels were booked way in advanced, we found out, so we had to stay in a hotel. It was very conveniently located by a tram stop, so we ended up taking the trams everywhere. Braden and I had met some Dutch people in Dublin who lived right outside of Amsterdam. We emailed them a few days before we got there and they came out to meet us. The were going to Belgium for the weekend, so they only had a few hours to spare on the Thursday we got in. But it was great to see them again and it was really awesome that they came to see us. So we met them at the train station and let them lead us to one of their favorite lunch spots. It turned out to be a bagel shop, so I was in heaven. We enjoyed some bagel sandwiches and then walked with them to their piercing shop, because they wanted to get their ear pierced while in town. On the way there they were trying to persuade us to get piercing too, and Braden made the mistake of saying, "if Chris and Taylore get one i´ll get one". So naturally, Chris and I got one. The boys ended up getting their eyebrow pierced and I got the top of my ear pierced. Only 5 hours into Amsterdam and we all do something rash! It was fun because after that we had morning time piercing cleaning parties. We had to part from our Dutch friends seeing as they had to get ready for the weekend. We decided to keep our first night there mellow, so we didn´t go out. We ate dinner at the most HORRIBLE diner ever. Chris and I were convinced that we were gonna get sick from the food, while Braden cleaned his plate. After dropping our day stuff of at the hotel, we set out to find the red light district. The map we had didn´t list a specific street, just a large area. So we walked towards the area, wondering if we would be able to find it right away. We didn´t need to wonder. All of a sudden we walked out onto a street flooded with red lights. There are canals running down most of the streets so all the red lights are reflected in the water, making the streets even more bright. We took a lap of one of the streets, amazed at what we were seeing. There were windows on all the ground and 1st floors of the buildings with women in them. The women were wearing basically nothing, some were kinda bobbing around in a sort of dance, while other just sat on a stool glaring. You were not allowed to take pictures of these girls and if you tried they would get violent. You would all of a sudden see one bang on a window and open her door, shouting. We were all afraid of the hookers once we saw that. Since we had been up since 5:30 that morning, we called it a night and went back to the hotel.
The next day was our walking tour day. There was another free walking tour that we were able to take so we were happy. We had breakfast at our hotel, since it was included, which turned out to be two pieces of burnt toast and a kraft singles bit of cheese. Thankfully we were able to find a little grocery market that had fruit and proper breakfast food close to the walking tour meeting spot. We learned that The Netherlands used to be a super power back in the day because they were the biggest shipping hub in Europe. Amsterdam is where the headquarters of the East India Trading Company used to be. Our tour guide took us through the red light district giving us some facts about it. It turns out that prostitution wasn´t completely legal until 2002, even though the red light district has been there since the 1600´s. Oh and the oldest working woman in the district is 73, ewwww. As we were walking through the area at 11am, there were definitely women still in the windows. Our tour took us through a lot of the canal area giving us a good view of the city. Amsterdam is very beautiful. Tons of little Dutch houses crammed together all leaning in different directions because of all the water and land movement. But they intentionally built the houses leaning forward because of they way they move from house to house. The stair cases in all the buildings are practically vertical spiral climbs, no joke. So there is no way to bring a couch or a bed up to the top floor. So there are pulleys attached to each roof so you can hoist stuff up and slid it in through windows. In order not to bang up your house or furniture as you lift it up, the houses are tilted forward. Very clever. We also saw the smallest house in Amsterdam, which was about 6ft wide and 3 stories high. I wanna know how those people have any furniture in a house 6ft wide. I won´t bore you with all the details of the walking tour, but two hight lights were the "coffee shop" where they filmed a scene from Oceans 12 and the Anne frank house, which I´ll talk about later cause we went there.
After the very amazing walking tour, we decided to get our museum on. The Rijskmuseum holds a lot of Dutch artifacts and treasure, but it also holds a lot of Rembrandt. We went there to see his art. Seeing as I´m not very knowledgeable in the subject, I stared blankly at a lot of the pieces because they tended to look the same. But they were all very good, a lot of detail in the face making the people look very real. We were able to see Rembrandt most famous piece called The Night Watch. This was pretty cool because it was huge and there was sheet that gave interesting facts about the painting. Such as, a deranged man attacked the painting with a knife two decades ago. From Rembrandt we moved to Van Gogh. He has a museum all to himself which houses pretty much everything he ever painted. I enjoyed this his art much better. We saw all his self portraits and the still life's of the flowers, but no starry night. We also learned a lot about his life. Like how he was from Holland, but moved to Paris and that when he started painting with the bright colors (we saw where he lived in Paris and the streets he painted, so that was cool). Once we were all art-ed out, we went out for dinner. The little guide book we got from the walking tour suggested food places. One suggestion was an authentic Mexican restaurant. We were so happy to have Mexican food it wasn´t even funny. Chips and salsa, chicken tacos, so good!
The walking tour company also puts on a pub crawl that runs 6 nights a week. We had been on this company´s pub crawl in Edinburgh, Munich, and Berlin, so we knew they were good times. This one was the biggest one we´ve been on so far. There were seriously 120 people there. They had to split us in two groups so we could visit all the bars. The coolest bar of the night was the Pirate bar, where when the theme song to Pirates of the Caribbean came on they lit torches and breathed fire. We had a good time, meeting a ton of UK kids. Whole groups of Irish, Scottish, and Brits traveling in Amsterdam apparently. Braden called it an early night, so Chris and I went to the dance club, which turned out to be kind of a bust because they kept playing the same songs over and over again. So we had the adventure of finding our way back to the hotel at 3am. Thankfully there was a night bus which happened to take us directly to our hotel. While on the bus, I kept smelling chicken. So I asked Chris if he could smell it too, and the girl in front of me tells me to turn around. Sure enough there is a very drunk guy leaning against the bus door eating a chicken leg. Weird, but hilarious.
Our last day we had a lot to accomplish. We had to pop into the piercing place again to have the lady check on them and make sure they were healing well. We got the green light from her, so we went shopping. They had a ton of awesome store so we all pick one thing we wanted to get. Braden wanted a new jacket, Chris new jeans, and me a new pair of converse. Chris and I succeeded in our mission. I got some sweet black tweed high top converse. We then set out for the Heineken Brewery, wait I mean Heineken Experience, cause its not a Brewery anymore. Having been to about 5 brewery´s so far, we breezed through how they make the beer and ended up at the show. We had no idea what the show was but waited in line for it. We managed to meet a fellow Californian traveling alone in line, so he hung out with us the rest of the day. So we filed into the show room and were told to stand on a certain area. No sooner had Rob (our new friend) said "Why does this area move?", did the entire platform we were on lurch forward. The show turned out to be a ride where we got to see and feel what it was like to be Heineken bottle. We were laughing hysterically because it was the cheesiest thing ever. The ride ended with a box opening to a night club playing Celebrate and hands pulling out bottles. Thankfully right after this show we were given one of our three beers. The rest of the place was like a theme park, with interactive games and things that taught you anything you wanted to know about the beer. There was also a ride where you could virtually steer your own horse carriage carrying kegs of beer. We decided not to participate in this ride, having the bottle ride fresh in our minds. There was one cool area where you could sit in these weird pod looking chairs and watch Heineken commercials from over the years. We left the Experience after enjoying two more beers, and headed for another guide book recommended dinner place. This was a student restaurant that was pretty cheep and good.
From there we took an unnecessary tram ride to The Anne Frank house. Now I dunno how familiar everyone is with Anne Frank, but we read her diary in middle school, which is about her and her family living in hiding during Nazi occupied Holland. It is a very moving book and very incredible that a young girl wrote it. But the actual house that the family hid in has been set up into a museum. We were able to go through the entire house seeing artifacts they found in the house along the way. The secret two story annex they hid in had an entry way that was concealed by a book case. We were actually allowed to walk behind the book case and into the secret annex. It was amazing to see because it became real. I need to read the book again. It was a very moving experience, up there with the concentration camp. We needed some cheering up so we walked back into the main part of town and to the coffee shop where they filmed oceans twelve. We sat in there for a while watching the clip from the movie play on repeat in the back of the shop. From there were decided to walk the red light district again. Since it was a saturday night, there were a lot more people out than last time. There were hoards of guys crowded around one window because the woman had particularly large boobs with very little fabric covering them. It was hilarious to see them all fixated in group and she just stood there looking annoyed that no one was coming to knock on her window. After a couple of laps, Rob when left us to go sleep. We found a nice little spot on the edge of the canal where Chris wanted to have his European photo shoot. This consisted of him looking mysterious by the water smoking a cigarette. I had a blast with his nice Nikon digital camera taking about 50 pictures of him. Braden was just laughing at me and my enthusiasm. After the photo shoot we called it a night, and said good by to Amsterdam.
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