This place is awesome!

FYI - O'cram wanted to go and asked me to tag along, so I did. We stayed Tuesday night until Thursday afternoon and slept at the Botel. Overall it was a pretty "light" visit since O'cram completely pussied out of any drinking / smoking, which is not the right thing to do in Adam imho. Next time i'll go with my older brother who is actually into all sorts of crazy shit.

We landed at Schipol and the first thing that struck me was the smell of weed in the terminal A good sign that we landed in the right airport. Then I noticed those cool (yet somewhat slow) double-decker trains.

The airport + train station + ferry proximity to the town centre is a work of genius. It could not be easier to get into Amsterdam. We actually never used the tram once.

Anyway, we checked in at around 7-ish and immediately went to the centre for a food reccy (dinner). We latched onto the main steet (the heavily commercialised one with the tramline down the other side) and was scouting the restaurants there. I was surprised to stumble across:

a) So many chip shops
b) So many McDonalds
c) So many non-Dutch restaurants

I soon found a place serving apparently traditional dutch menus, had a look at the menu, but was rather... uninspired. It read pea soup, ham, herring, salmon. But I kind of eat those ingredients every day anyway. Unmotivated by the culinary options, we just ducked into some Italian joint for a steak, which was just ok. The place was kinda dirty though which was odd for a mainstreet restaurant. My guess is cos it wasn't a real Italian restaurant. Oh the beer was nice, but kind of watered down. I had to finish Ocram's. The pussy.

Anyway, the next thing that struck me was all the attractive (TALL) girls... just thought i'd mention that... I like tall girls.

After dinner, we simply wandered around contently. With the canals, cobbles and lights it's very attractive by night. For a Tuesday it was very vibrant too, full of people.

O'cram was shattered by midnight, so we got shuteye.

The next day, up by 9 and had breakfast & coffee at the botel. Jumped on the 15 min ferry to the train station and then on food to the centre. We more or less wandered again for a good number of hours. Loving the canals and shops. We passed some obvious sights including The Dam but the Kerk was being majorily restored!

Several bridges, squares and parks later and O'cram wanted to check out some market (Albert Cuyp), which we eventually got to. Nothing special, just a market where I had some vietnamese springroll and another coffee.

Then we went to the Reijksmuseum, which was also being heavily restored, but this time we were kinda disappointed. Only 13 rooms and mainly art and porcelain. Not enough weapons for my liking, especially for a Reichsmuseum. The neo-gothic building was cool though.

After that we wandered off to the museum park and I ate a "Fatboy" burger and had another coffee. We chilled out, walked past the van Gogh museum then stumbled by the big park for more chilling (the one with a million bycicles whizzing around).

Then it started to rain, so we got pissed on a little.

tbc...

Awesome, love reading this. And O'Cram being a pussy is fucking hilarious, haha.

Dutch cuisine, as you immediately noticed, is entirely uninspired. So you didn't just hit a bad restaurant. And their beer is shit. I mean don't get me wrong, they do a lot of shit a lot better than most of the world, but food-wise you're rarely gonna be in for a treat in the Netherlands.

And if their Italian restaurants are anything like most of them around here they're ran by Turkish dudes who pretend to be Italian for commercial reasons.

Cool that you used the ferry system, love that. And the girls...I have a Dutch colleague who's 1.93m or 6'4". She often wears heels which make her around 6'7". Let's just say that it's enjoyable.

Can't wait for the inevitable red light distrct update.

lol, good stuff. Also amused by all the pussification of Ocram. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of the trip.

So we got a little wet cos we were wandering around under my trusty umbrella, which didn't help in keeping O'cram (or more importantly, my left arm) very dry but that's part of the adventure I suppose. O'cram was bitching about being cold, and I kept telling him that it wasn't cold, and even if it was, I would hack it because i'm an SAS commando.

That was the general level of banter and shit-shooting between us. I must have spoken so much shit during that entire trip.

When it stopped raining, we pretty much did more wandering around. Passing by the odd sight here and there, almost getting run over by one or two bicycles, somehow going round in circles a couple of times. I stopped to get another coffee and some kind of pasty from a bakery. It was quite oily but nice.

We then found ourselves back on the Dam commerical road, namely a tobacco shop where I spent at least 30 minutes deciding which box of cigars to purchase. I ended up getting a box of 25 fairly chunky nicaraguans (dutch brand) for 30 euro. The prices were crazy cheap compared to UK prices. I am sure to pick up another box when I return.

Then we were hungry so we went wandering off again and found ourselves in the leidseplein square in front of a pretty good looking pub, the Old Bell. I had beer with schnizel and fries, Ocram i think had steak. The Schnizel was quite oily, but nice. I finished o'crams beer, again, but would have wanted a couple more.

Then as it was getting late, we got back to the Dam square and chilled for about an hour or so, sat underneath the phallic WW2 monument to dutch casualties, which is a monument i didn't really appreciate, but it was nice to sit there, absorbing the characteristic buildings surrounding us and watching people go by. That gave me an opportunity to sample one of my cigars.

Before setting off to the Botel, o'cram wanted to see the red light district, so I whipped out the map and it was actually just 5 minute walk away, so off we went. The streets on approach we're pretty cool. Lots of bars, stalls and people. When we got there, i was surprised to see just how many people were there. So this is obviously the tourist hot spot at night. The hookers were actually quite hot. They were more or less models. Standing behind their windows in fluorescent bikinis under UV light. I was wondering how much they charge, o'cram heard some guy say 50 euro's and I heard the same guy say 10 minutes, so i guess that's 50 euro for 10 minutes. Which sounds expensive, but I guess the less you stay, the less chance there is in you catching something.

It was hilarious seeing black guys up at the windows trying to half-open the doors and chat up the girls. That made me chuckle. Seeing desperate black dudes thinking they can use their designer clothes, charm and black-snake to get freebies from working girls. They obviously didn't get it. Several racist jokes ensued, mainly from me

After that I think we head off to the botel for shuteye. At this point i kept asking o'cram if he wanted to stay out drinking but he was having none of it. Lame.

The next day we slept well and woke up late, checked out of the botel and did a last but of sightseeing. We went to the amsterdam museum, which was alot better than the reijksmuseum but still not enough emphasis on 17-18th century dutch warfare. Wandered around some more, had some more fries. I had a coffee and another drink and then we trudged our way over to the train station and then eventually Schiphol airport. As we waited for the gate to open, i teased o'cram by getting myself a burger and fries and eating it in front of him

And that's about it.

Overall it's a great place to visit and very easy. However, to fully enjoy it, i do think you need to drink and / or smoke as a minumum requirement. Something i'll plan to do next time for sure.

Lol, the typical English tourist.

It's a shame the Rijksmuseum has been (and will be) closed for so long. It's supposed to reopen first half of 2013 (they started in 2003!). Similarly, the Scheepsvaartmuseum (Maritime Museum) will be closed until summer 2011. I do believe you can still visit the replica of an 18th century VOC ship though (near the science museum).
The Rijks does have an online catalogue though: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_ass ... ontext_id=

Did you buy your cigars at Hajenius btw? It's where I buy mine. It's a beautiful store and if you haven't already, you should walk to the back of it, past the room where you buy the actual cigars.

Haha, dude come on! The food and museums are mediocre, what else do you expect?

I can't entirely remember the shop I got them from. I think it was on Damrak though. The chap behind the counter was kind of middle aged, white haired and pretty cheery. You could tell he liked the odd bifter.

Is that the back room where they hid Ann Frank?

Man, O'Cram sounds like such a pussy. There's no way I could go to Amsterdam and not at least drink. I plan on drinking and smoking when I go, assuming I don't have to worry about any testing when I get back. I'm definitely looking forward to it... more so after having heard of your trip. Too bad about the museums.

Yeah wtf is up with that...doesn't finish his one glass of beer, is destroyed at midnight and even refuses to eat at a BK? I mean for God's sake, you're on vacation, take your little sissie diets somewhere else. One burger once in a while and some beer won't kill you.

omg, is that why he wouldn't indulge? Watching his girlish figure? Christ... I play on having a week or schnitzel and other lovely foods while I'm there... screw dieting. I'll still try to exercise.

Yeah as long as you have a fairly active and healthy lifestyle I don't see why a bit of crappy fastfood shouldn't be possible once in a while. Once you get to that point you're not worried about "health" anymore, but about gaining a girlie pound or two for a week.

I may be going to London again in November. Not sure yet.

That's awesome. Pretty much how I expect Satis to act when he's in Europe.

yay, more british humor!

lol

Just curious, how would you define British humour?

boring and dry.

More honestly, I'm not sure how to answer that. There's definitely a difference between the humor here and there (at least on television), but I'm not sure I could accurately explain the difference. I think British humor is more subdued, whereas American humor is more aggressive, but I don't think that's the only difference.