We caught our 1pm bus to Amsterdam, and were pretty excited. The bus took about 5 hours, and our tour guide who was ment to tell us all about Amsterdam and what to do, fell asleep the whole way there.
We arrived at our hotel (not Hostel this time!!!) at around 7, we got a bit lost on the way. We were on the trams with 4 Kiwi's and got talking the whole way there and missed our stop twice... We got back just in time to have a shower and get ready for our pub crawl. Most of the guys we had met on the bus were doing the same pub crawl (as Bus About sell the tickets)
The pub crawl was pretty mad. For 17Euro each, we went to 6 pubs and 1 night club, had free shots most of the night and got a free beer at each place we went too.
Next morning was a bit of a slow start (Jarrod especially), we had arranged to do a bike tour of Amsterdam at lunch time. Out of the 15 (approx) of us who did the pub crawl the night before, only 7 of us turned up for the bike tour, and I can tell you it was the best hang over cure ever.
Amsterdam is a beautiful city. It is a canal city like Brugges and Vienna. Amsterdam is a fairly new city and before it was built used to be under water. It was dammed off from the river system (the Amstel River) hence the name, Amster-Dam. Amsterdam is a completely flat city, so the bike ride was not streneous at all, basiaclly everyone rides in Amsterdam so there are bikes everywhere and they are more dangerous than cars.
The bikes are the old school californian bikes and were so fun to ride, they all had names and mine was "Vanilla Ice" (amesome, I was so happy with that) and Krystals was "Aggie Duck" (????). The tour guide was so funny, we has a bit of a dope head but really knew his stuff. He did get into a fight with a car because we had a large group of bikes, so our tour guide encouraged us to all give him the finger as he drove off. The car then came back and tried to run him over and spat at him. Was funny, but a bit sick also...
We saw all the sights of Amsterdam and also went through the red light district which was a bit of an eye opener. Girls just sitting behind glass doors along a seedy looking street. Quite an experience.
We had 4 older american ladies on our tour, one of them couldnt even ride a bike, it was so funny but really frustrating. We had to keep waiting. Then she ran into a parked car, fell off and got a big bump on her head. After our hour boat cruise (which was part of the tour) she got lost because she we had all had a beer. We had to wait for about 20 minutes while the tour guide went and found her, her friends said she was a bit drunk.. So funny...
That night we had organised to meet up with a few of guys and go to a Steak House for dinner. We also went for a walk around the red light district to see what it was like at night, very interesting. There was a lot more of "them" out, probably why there called "ladies of the night" I guess. Anyway, had a great night.
Next day we went to the Van Goch Muesum. This was really good. I am not a great art lover, but the tour was really interesting. We did an audio tour with headphones (so we looked like real tourists) but it was good. We also bought some art work, some copies of a couple of his famour ones and we also bought a really cool oil painting which was done by a local artist so it was a bit of a variation on the Van Goch.
Spent the rest of the time in Amsterdam just looking around the city. Apart from the seedy stuff which everyones knows about, it is actually a very beautiful and interesting city. It is only a few city (in European terms) but has had a very interesting past. Also the Netherlands Soccer team are kicking ass in the Euro Cup. We have all been following them and their supporters are always to loudest.
Holland...Holland...Holland. Oi....Oi....Oi
