After spending three days in the only part of the Netherlands we were destined to see I was glad I had only booked three nights! We checked in, soon realizing that due to the skinny stature of the buildings here there are no lifts, and we happened to be on the 3rd floor. We headed out into the crazy, crazy maze of canals that makes Amsterdam so pretty. Since you must look first for bicycles, then for trams, then for cars, crossing the roads was no easy effort!
As was apparent as we wandered around, Amsterdam is still very much about the sex industry, 'coffee' shops and museums of all manner of things. We found some dinner and headed out for the red light district which as imagined is full of girls in windows. We were introduced to Big Momma Alley, Posh Alley and everything in between. It was amazing how busy the area was with tourists and families and was definately a different experience.
We figured to get a true feeling of the place we would do a walking tour, yep free again. We saw a huge range of things from the largest bridge to the smallest house - 1.3m wide. The guide also took us to the famous squats which were painted and very evocative to its political art, all the time passing hundreds and hundreds of pushbikes (7 for every single person in Amsterdam). The houses here are on some crazy angles and unfortunatly due to a massive 3 hour line we missed Anne Franks house, maybe next time. While Boen went and got crazy on the pub crawl we had a few quite drinks and called it a night.
After a rather sluggish start to the day we adventured out to the Vondel Park where all manner of odd and interesting people were spending their day. Although the sun was refusing to make an appearance it was still nice to be enjoying the outdoors. We finished off our time in Amsterdam with the delicious Febos (food in a wall) and the compulsary entertainment at the Moulin Rouge - why everything of this nature is called this I have no idea. Boen got pulled up on stage to be drawn on and Ray had an epic dance off with the entertainer, I was in histerics by this stage.
It was going to be fun getting up at the crack of dawn to head off to Berlin and we arent looking forward to the 10 hour bus ride, I guess we have done longer. Amsterdam was definately an interesting city with so much happening it was hard to decide what to see in the time we were there. Hopefully 5 days in Berlin will allow us to do some more thorough exploring!
L&R
