Amsterdam, The Netherlands!

Sunday, September 20^th, 2009

The bus dropped us off in Amsterdam at about 5:30 am and we had to wait to catch the bus till 7:25 am because it was a Sunday. It was not a lot of fun sleeping on the bus station floor for an hour. After we caught the bus we went to our hostel which was a 10 minute tram ride or 20 minute walk to the city center. We stayed at a hostel called Stay Okay, which was a very nice hostel with a good breakfast! We could not check into the hostel until 2pm though so we just dropped off our bags then headed into town to explore a little bit. Town was very nice and had really good architecture! We saw the palace and the city monument. We had a tour of the Rembrandt house and grabbed our first “special” muffin. It was a bust though. After that we decided to go back to our hostel and nap. After leaving the hostel and going back to the city

center we went back downtown and found the red light district. The red light district was something interesting, very different from the usual. We found a café called Stones Café and bought a space cake and a joint. We ate the space cake but could not feel anything so we decided to walk around. We found some places to eat and then we could feel everything! It was a strange feeling though because you are out of your element and in a different city so it was more trippy than usual. We caught the tram for the hostel and called it a night after getting lost in the red light district for an hour.

Monday, September 21^st, 2009

On Monday we got up early to catch a tour that started at 11 am. On this tour we walked around different parts of town and learned about different things like canals and how they stay smelling nice, shutting down of red light district and hash café’s, why the houses are tilted forward, and the buildings. After this we decided to try and find the other Spanish people but we couldn’t so went back to our hostel for naps. After the naps we started to walk back to the tram station and ended up running into the Spanish people. The Spanish people had been in the park next to our hostel eating mushrooms! They were tripping out and laughing so it was nice because we could lead them back to downtown. After downtown we walked around a bit with them and then went into a club where they offered us free shots! They played a lot of Spanish music at this club so it was fun just dancing and hanging out. After that Emily and I decided to head back to our hostel and meet up with Samantha.

Tuesday, September 22^nd, 2009

Tuesday morning we had to check out so we decided to just leave our bags there and just see more of the city, but the city near our hostel. We went to the park in front of the Van Gogh Museum which had the “I AMSTERDAM” giant letters. We then went to the Van Gogh Museum which was my favorite and saw a lot of different art pieces. After that we went to the Heineken Brewery where we got a tour. The tour was a lot of fun with lots of beer tasting and learning about the process of making beer. They had a trippy room in the tour with the ceiling made out of beer bottles and lots of TV’s playing different clips of random things. After this we went and grabbed our bags from the hostel and went to the bus station to wait for the bus. We ran into the Spanish people at the bus station and waiting for our night bus. Taking a 14 hour bus ride to Amsterdam is not a very good idea but was definitely worth it!