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Thats it, the London summer isn't coming out to play so were out-a-here, over to Amsterdam for the weekend and my 24th birthday.
Elisha, Kirsty, Julie and I all met at heathrow on the friday arvo for our first amsterdam experience. Firstly I should say I had a lot of difficulty finding accommodation there all hostels booked took me weeks to find the little apartment we ended up in and couldn't figure out why till Fiona at work googled the weekend and amsterdam and up came the link to Europe's biggest gay pride parade! We picked gay pride weekend to hit Amsterdam, well it should be colourful atleast.
Found our place dumped bags and headed out to have a look around the town which was so brightly decorated with colourful streamers and balloons everywhere for the festival. Managed to get pretty lost as all the canals look the same and only ended up having one drink as couldn't find anywhere good, so headed home pretty early to get ready for a big saturday.
On saturday we woke late and headed for a big breakfast as we felt a big day ahead. Julie bought me a Harrods cake which was lovely, and we sampled some of the local coffee shop goods and bakery treats before heading to the canals to watch the gay pride parade. Was very colourful to say the least, sat in the sun and enjoyed the music of the passing canal boast before setting our minds to some culture, we headed to the Van Gogh museum. Saw some of his great works and bought postcards to prove it, all i could afford in the gift shop! Then we quickly made tracks to the Heineken Experience where we were just too late for the last tour.
Went home to change for a big night out and it certainly was. There were people everywhere. Found the backpacker street and hung out there before setting out sights on the red-light district. And we got so lost trying to find it, ended up in this really dodgy back alley where there were the girls in the windows but it was dark and next to the back of a church and not many people around so we quickly got out of there before discovering the more tourist friendly red-light district and felt a little bit more at ease but will never look at a shop window the same. What a night!
Struggled out of bed at a reasonable time sunday morning and headed to Anne Franks House which was surreal that they lived up there for 2 years before getting ratted out. Very sad story. The streets were much quieter now think everyone was sleeping off the night before, so wondered around the streets and sat in the sun and had a cruzie morning before catching our flight back to London.
What a weekend!
