amsterdam

The first destination on my euro travels… yay!

I set off, all bright eyed and bushy tailed… ready to hit the ‘dam! Plan was to meet up with my travel buddies celena, chloe, danny, damo and millie who had already been there for one night. Apparently there was a huge conference in town so we had trouble getting beds. Our hostel was right smack bang in the middle of the red light district – nice. Here’s what it looked like when I arrived…



hmmm

It was ok in the end, pretty festy, but we had some funny dorm roommates on the first night – Gaelen (from Canada) and Casey (from Alaska), doing a whirlwind backpacking tour of europe. They were only in town for one night and unfortunately slept through the whole thing… oh well, next time boys.



Went to the Van Gogh Museum, of course only half of it was open. Still cool though. We absolutely did not visit any coffeeshops at all, none whatsoever. Nor did we wander about looking at naked ladies in the bizarre sex district. Damo certainly didn’t want to go to a live sex show, and I certainly didn’t agree to go with him. But in the end we didn’t go (we actually didn’t). I think it may have caused Damo mental trauma so probably a good thing.



There was this one alleyway in the red light area so narrow you could only get through 1 or 2 people wide at a time, completely lined with bored naked women behind windows, some doing their hair, some talking on the phone, and some desperately wiggling their ass and looking seductive to try to get the attention of passers-by. Oh yeah, that’s the other weird thing, the streets at night are completely filled with men – posses of them. Felt strange to be a woman.

Found a great little bar in the middle of the tourist area for a yummy dinner – here’s me and millie deep in conversation (thanks for the pic celena!)



But the highlight was a bike tour we did conducted by Pete the Dutch-Canadian gay bike rider. About 2 seconds of instructions, then we were let loose on the streets of the ‘dam! Everyone rides bikes, its so great. We rode in single file formation, stopping every now and then for a history lesson.





It was totally ace, took us to the outer city and some pretty neighbourhoods, then right out past the city to a cheese and clog factory. Cheese was yummy, farmer was a total loser – but the cheese won out in the end.



Then visited a windmill… (of course)



Gave us a completely different perspective on Amsterdam, just as well coz I think I would have written it off as a sex tourist hell-hole. Its definitely a place I’d like to go back to another time and discover more off the tourist track.

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