This Must Be The Place: Amsterdam, Holland

We left Colindale at an ungodly time to take the N5 to Golders Green, only to hop onto the National Express bus to Stansted Airport. After arriving at Stansted, Jess and I boarded our 7am flight to Schipol Airport, outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands. We made it through border control and headed towards the trains towards Amsterdam Centraal Station. The train wound up taking about 20 minutes, but we wound up sitting next to the most typical Dutch woman I have ever seen. It must have been an omen for the trip ahead.

After arriving in Amsterdam, we were kinda overwhelmed to say the least. Everything was in Dutch, which is by far the craziest language I have ever seen. It more or less is German influenced, but with the addition of a zillion letters and a heavy emphasis of j's. It was hilarious. After perusing the area, we found a quaint little bistro to get some lunch and to map out where we needed to get to. We figured out our itinerary and were able to get ahold of the apartment renter. We got our GVB tram passes and headed down on the number 4 to Fredericksplein, where the letter would meet us. We wound up getting a studio apartment down the street off of Flackstraat. After settling in, we went off exploring and managed to grab some food from this local Dutch-equivalent Whole Foods. With groceries in hand, we went to get some dinner from this quaint little Mexican joint called Antonio's, which was somewhat reasonably priced. From there, we decided to call it a night, and enjoy the studio apartment, free from crazy Middlesex students.

The next morning, we got up early and headed into the center of town. We managed to get lost about every turn, even with our fancy map. We wound up touring the flower market (Blomengrach) and tried to visit the Anne Frank huis, but the line was unbelievably long. After walking all the way to Prisengrach, lunch time was upon us, so we finally were able to justify eating Dutch pancakes! We stumbled upon this place called Sara's, which had the largest pancakes I have ever seen! I wound up getting a Dutch Waffle with Strawberry marmalade, which is still making my mouth water. After this delicious lunch, we navigated our way down to Museumplein, which has the I Amsterdam sign and the various museums. We decided to hit up the Van Gogh museum, which was really good just exceptionally busy. We decided to skip going to the Rijicksplein museum and went to grab dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, down in Leidesplein. We ultimately wound up adding another pin to my collection, and also, got a pretty kickass sundae for free. :) After strolling outside, we decided to walk down the shady Red Light District, which I actually found to be beyond amusing in a childish way and really scary. As we were walking down, there were all the men just staring into the booths with the prostitutes, which I thought was kinda weird. On the other hand, as we were walking, some of the prostitutes started to bang on the windows to get our attention, since I wasn't paying them any attention. After our little walk, we decided to turn in for the night.

The following day, we just did some more rambling through the city and crossed paths with the Hemp and Marijuana museum. With just the name, we knew that we needed to partake in this and walked in. After perusing the exhibits, we more or less came to the conclusion that most of the so called information was complete rubbish. They had this section that talks about the US and their law enforcement, which was complete nonsense. Yet, the crown jewel of the place was a room where they grew marijuana bushes, and being complete tourists, we took pictures infront of it. After that, we visited this place called Condomerie and they even had painted condoms of different objects. It was well worth a visit.

After all of this, the next day was more less demure. Just continued to wander around and take in the sights. Ultimately, we wound up having to head back to the airport and came back into London on Saturday at about 10am, gaining yet another three stamps! :)