Amsterdam

The land of sex, drugs and stroopwaffles. Weed is just a permanent smell in the city. We're heading to Berlin on a train right now so I can give you my low-down on this... interesting city.

Couple of things we learnt:

1. It smells like weed. It you can't handle walking around looking disgusted at all the people smoking pot, it may not be the city for you. It's legal here and everyone is doing it.

2. Anne Frank's house has a huge line. We didn't even go in because the line up was too long. Get there early in the morning.

3. The Red Light District is exactly what you have heard it is. No more no less.... well there was a bit more clothes than I expected. Sex shows, women standing in windows with old men thinking they're being sneaky taking a zoomed in picture from across the road and lots of sex shops.

4. There are two distinct types of coffee shops. They might both serve coffee but one would have... higher... quality brownies.

Day 1: we arrived in Amsterdam pretty early in the morning. As it is usually our first task getting into a new city, we set off to find food. A lot of the streets look the exact same in Amsterdam and they have a H&M every 10 steps so it doesn't help trying to remember where stores and restaurants are. I'm usually very good with directions but I got turned around in this city quite frequently. We found a little cafe where I ate the fanciest looking piece of toast. It had chicken, guacamole, avocado and more stuff I had no idea what to do with. They don't warn you about trying to eat a 20 cm high piece of toast delicately. We headed off to the campground where we set up our tent surrounded by people getting high. Again, it's everywhere. We figured trying to go out in Europe in hiking boots wasn't a very fashionable decision so we found a big shopping street (with 3 H&M's on the ONE street) to buy some shoes. After going into a bunch of stores with shoes that were too expensive for me to justify shoving into a backpack, we found a store that was comparable to Payless. I found a cheap flat and we were on our way to dinner. Eating out in these cities can be a hit and miss. Sometimes you feel like an idiot sitting on Trip Advisor trying to find a good restaurant and maybe you should have just winged it. Well we didn't wing it this night and I'm glad we didn't. We went to a restaurant with no menu, thirty seats and high reviews. They told you what they were serving that night and you chose from the 5 dishes. Both Jordon and I agreed it was one of the best meals we had ever had. We had mussels, salmon and a curry chicken. It was incredibly priced too. Jordon said he would have paid double for that meal. We headed back to the campground to make sure our tent didn't fly into the canal.

Day 2: the nice thing about our campground was it had a little supermarket where you could buy freshly baked croissants and spreads for a couple of Euros. We grabbed some breakfast, showered and ventured off into the city centre again. We wanted to go and see where Anne Frank's house was. What should have been a 15 minute walk turned into a 45 minute walk because I think the city streets physically change every 10 minutes. It's probably a hilarious trick to play on tourists. Anyway, get to Anne Frank's house, see the lineup, look at the outside, think "huh, there's that"and head to a park for lunch. I did the inside of her house back in grade 10 and Jordon didn't seem too interested so it wasn't a big deal to us to skip. If history interests you though, it is worth the lineup. We went to the Rijksmuseum after lunch where I was much more impressed with the outside and the gardens than the inside. It was the museum to see in Amsterdam though. We saw a couple pieces by Van Gough, Waterloo and Nights Watch by Rembrandt. I was highly entertained by the tourists taking a picture of EVERY SINGLE ITEM in the museum... " oh here's a picture of a piece by... I can't remember. OH! And this was painted by... a guy... in a village... depicting that... devastation." We definitely needed a drink after our hard museum day and found a nice spot on the canal to sit outside. We had an early night at the campground.

Day 3: our campground had canoes you could rent for an hour but only on weekends which sucked because it was 25 degrees and being in the water would have been nice. We went back into the city and did a canal tour instead. It took us to "100 top sights" and I think 95 of those sights were the different canals. It was enjoyable regardless. I also found out walking 6 days in a row makes you loose weight. My jeans had been falling down on me so we went back to the shopping street to find some jeans. Once I was all decked out we went back to our tent to have a drink and relax a bit. At some point, it became clear that having an experience was a thing in Amsterdam. While relaxing back at our tent, we looked into a live sex show (sorry Baba). They were incredibly expensive for something to just "have an experience." In the end we decided to just have a drink and people watch ON the Red Light District and put our money towards a bus tour the next day. Also we got ice cream.

Day 4: we headed into the city early to grab breakfast before our bus tour. We found a place that did Dutch pancakes which could have been called Heaven. It's this thin round pancake the size of a clock which you can fill with anything they have (I went for bananas, blueberries and nutella). We were on a sugar high (I promise), so we walked back towards the museum as the buildings around there looked really nice, before getting onto our sun visor, fanny-packed, classic tourist filled bus. There was also an adorably naive lady who kept asking "What's that smell?" Welcome to Amsterdam. We headed out to Zaanse Schans which is a windmill village where we went inside a working windmill that chops wood. The windmills were pretty incredible to see from the inside. Next stop was the fishing village of Volendam. The houses were amazing with their bright red roofs. We went into a cheese factory where they showed us how they made Gouda and we ended up buying some for supper later. We took a ferry across the lake to another little town called Marken where they showed us how they make the wooden clogs. Both of us were pretty tired from trying to walk at a slow pace with all the lovely old people who just want to get their pictures and were oblivious to anything around them.... okay maybe annoyed is a better word, so we called it a day and ate our Gouda back in our tent.

Amsterdam is a must see city. Even if you don't enjoy the smell and the Red Light District, the houses and canals are a sight to behold. We didn't see a live sex show, but maybe next time Amsterdam.

- Vanessa xo