Thursday, August 12, 2010

Day 31 - Amsterdam

Friday, June 12th - I was a bit tired the next morning but nothing too horrible. I grabbed a seat with Rochelle on the coach and we were off to Amsterdam. It was a somewhat early morning so we slept the first few hours and then stopped for an early lunch. I didn't have much of an appetite so I just picked at my food at the rest stop. The drive to Amsterdam was fairly short, we were there by about 2pm. Our first stop was the "I Amsterdam" sign, some people snapped pics but a bunch of decided to use the time to go shopping. I ended up wandering into a LaCoste store and spent 140 Euros on a dress! I love it and it was worth every penny. After shopping we met up with the tour and got back on the coach to head to the Heineken factory for a tour. Katia had to let us off in a bike lane and we had to jump off rather quickly because we were in a no parking zone. Not being careful, I jumped off the coach right in front of a vespa and almost got run over - if it wasn't for Sian screaming at me to get out of the way I definitely would've been hit. Thanks Sian!

The Heineken tour was quite alright and there was an interesting adventure ride that simulated the entire bottling process that was rather creative. As usual we were on limited time so most of the group were keen on getting our free beers at the end of the tour. Since Sandra wasn't feeling well she gave me her free beers as well but I couldn't get through them, there wasn't enough time. We then headed to our hotel and it was actually quite nice, we were given enough time to get ready to go out before dinner and then we headed to our "cultural show."

We headed into the Red Light district and I quickly learned that Amsterdam is full of cobblestone streets and is not the place for heels. I got caught up pretty badly at one point and had to grab on to Paula to avoid eating the pavement. Sian took us through some of the ally ways and we got a look at the prostitutes in the floor length windows - they looked so bored! One was even just doing her nails - c'mon, if this was their job they should put a bit of effort in! We then went to the sex show - it was movie theatre setting that overlooked a stage. We place our drink orders and then the first act wanted volunteers from the audience to participate. In the end Matt F, Ben and Lorraine ended up going up. It was pretty funny to watch them with the stripper probably the most entertaining part of the entire show. The rest of the show consisted of 2 couples having sex and finally a lesbian couple. The entire thing was pretty boring, it all looked scripted and the participants didn't seem very interested. I will give props to the lesbians, they actually looked like they were having fun. After an hour it was time for us to go and I was quite okay with leaving. Next we headed to a bar that Sian recommended and I really liked it. It had good music and a decent crowd. A few of us stepped out to go to a cafe to purchase some pot, I ended up buying a space-cake (similar to a pot brownie) and also bought a joint. It's like ordering from McD's only it's pot instead of hamburgers! We took everything back to the bar as it was legal to smoke in the back there. I took about 2 bites of my space-cake, decided it was disgusting and opted to just stick to drinking for the night. Kraisten and I ended up chatting to some English blokes for quite a long time, they were absolutely hilarious until they got too drunk and kept repeating the same jokes which I got tired with.

After a few hours at the bar we decided we wanted to move onto a club, Sian gave us the name of a decent place and a bunch of us jumped into cabs. I ended up sitting on the floor of a van-taxi and the driver ended up charging per person instead of using the meter. So even though I didn't have a seat he still charged me! I'm sure the driver made a good penny off of us. We got to the club and found out it was 20 Euros to get in, which we thought was a bit steep. Instead we ended up at a bar called Prime which was actually really fun. The music was great, even played "Memories" which is our Contiki tour song. The night was heaps of fun. As usual I was one of the last to leave and by the time we all got cabs, only Alex and I were left so we had to take one just the two of us. This was fine except for the fact that are hotel was really far out of the city - it cost us 50 Euros to get back! Pretty steep when you're only splitting it between two people. We got back and Matt F and Ben were waiting for us outside the hotel. I was tired and pretty drunk so I opted to head to bed. I got back to my room and tried to sleep but I wasn't as tired as I thought so I decided to go catch up on some emails in the lobby - sorry to all who got drunk emails that night, especially Padraic. Eventually Matt F and Ben showed up, they were locked out of their room. Matt was pretty much done - he tried sleeping on the couch in the lobby but the staff told him to get up. I hung out with them for a bit and I eventually headed off to bed, but apparently the poor boys were up for a few hours.

I amsterdam




World of Heineken




Prime


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