 |
| love love love love love Amsterdam |
It is the best city I have visited in Europe. I only have good things to say about it. It's clean, beautiful, the people are friendly, the police vans have built in coffee machines on the side, there are no homeless people, there is every flavor accent from every country, the scent of Mary Jane everywhere, and the crime rate is really, really low. What I like especially is how it felt like it had a Milwaukee beat to it: music, art, theatre, hippies, and the vibe of everyone helping each other out. It felt like a cooler version of home. Oh, and the city is so flat, biking is the main form of transportation. In one year 60,000 bikes are stolen which make it the biggest petty crime. There are so many bikes, people lock their bikes onto another bike because there isn't anymore room to lock it, they have their very own lane of traffic -stop light and crosswalks included!-. I will say however, the language is impossible to try and use. When Monica and I arrived at the metro station Sloterdijk, we looked at the the schedule to get downtown and could not pronounce a single word. At all. This is also applicable to street signs, just don't even try to say it, you'll kill it -and when you try to pronounce it to a local they will give you the 'what' face until you show them the word and their face lights up and they pronounce it completely unlike how it looks.... figures-. Let me start at the beginning:
My friend, Monica, and I arrived downtown Amsterdam, Thursday 23:30 and found our way to The Flying Pig hostel. Now the hostel is a world I had prepared myself for from all the things anyone had ever said, movies, and magazine articles but I was not fully prepared. If you have never been to a hostel it's like playing the Sims College Life game but add 80% more hot guys under 30, some frat and sorority people, more communal bunk bed rooms, a bar, and pillowie smoking room. We checked in and there was already a party going, music plays 24 hours and there is always something going on. After check in we went to the nearest "coffee shop" -which conveniently happened to be across the street- so I could look at a menu and order a "few things". Those things blew my mind away. We returned to The Flying Pig and looked for our bed, which turned out to be in a 16 bedded room made up of mostly guys with their shirts off. I wasn't prepared. Monica and I shared a full sized top bunk which gave me prime scoping space of the fabulous view below, but I didn't think about how much noise a lot of people make when they sleep in the same room. Man farts, snoring, choke snoring, sleep talking, scratching, whispering, and the door opening and closing all night from people going to and fro are a few examples.
Friday morning Monica and I got up and ready and immediately went out to explore. The problem was, we had excellent plans for arrival and departure, but not for the actual stay so we didn't know where to go first. The nice lady behind the desk gave us a map and pointed us in a few directions. On the first day we visited Anne Franks house, the Sex Museum, and the Red Light District -along with lots of wandering around and exploration time-. Around 8pm we decided to go back to the hostel for a little nap so we could experience some night life but we accidentally slept the entire night into the next morning.... whoops.
 |
| Red Light District- so no ladies in these windows :( |
Saturday, we went to the Heineken brewery tour, Gassard diamonds tour, ate warm waffles with Nutella on top, walked more of the Red Light District and we ran into a minor issue: we had no where to sleep. We made reservations at another hostel but realized it was too far away and there wasn't transport back to the train station early enough for us to get on the train we needed and all the other hostels in town where either booked or had a two night minimum stay. Ok, we are a little screwed. At the last minute I remembered 'Couch Surfing', its a website and app used by people all over the world who want a free place to stay. We looked in our area -there were hundreds of hosts- and I sent out four pleas and one responded with detailed directions -take tram 9 and get off at Nic Lublinksraat- and time. He had all positive reviews and had been doing it for three years. Perfect. Monica and I were a little nervous, for obvious women traveling reasons, but we both know people who have done it and say it's awesome. Upon intros we all hit it off, his apartment had Rastafarian music playing, he offered food and opened a beer for me right in front of my eyes. He was a cool dude. He had three friends come over -two frenchmen and a dutchman- and we talked until the wee hours of the morning. None of them did drugs, one was a jazz guitarist, one was a musicologist, and one was a pilot. So we slept on a guy's couch, in good faith, good company, and we will never see him again. That's really cool.
Around 5:45 Sunday we got up and made our way back home to Amboise. On this trip, we used every form of transportation offered: bus, metro, tram, city bus, train. I can now tell you how to use all of these in France and NL. I already miss Amsterdam <3
Oh, btw ladies: the man to woman ratio is 4:1 and three of the four are REALLY HOT.
If you want to pass on a good pair of genes, just go to Amsterdam. You can line them up, pick one, and it's yours.
I got caught staring sometimes.... there were so many! Eye candy central. Another super bonus.
No comments:
Post a Comment