Holland and a not very interesting Amsterdam story

Leaving from Boppard was hard. We all knew that we had only one more night before the end of our tour and none of us was ready for it to be over. Not to mention, when you spend 18 hours a day with someone, you are basically forced to become close. Otherwise, there’d be a bus full of dead bodies. It’s like a crash course on friendship. I think we were all dreading arriving in Amsterdam, simply because it was our last night. 

On our way through through Holland we tried to fit as much in as we could. We stopped at a million wooden windmills for pictures and visited this little tourist town for souvenirs.

Windmills!

Wooden Shoe Museum

 For the first time since coming to Europe, I shopped. For myself. On purpose. And then I spent the next hour feeling guilty. Obviously, I’ve got problems. 

See, I have a shopping bag!

After my shopping spree we hopped back on the bus and headed for a little sea town for lunch. I had sea food of course. We also absolutely had to take off our shoes and roll up our pants to walk in the ocean. Even though it was freezing! Of course, we took pictures of that too. Are you noticing a theme here? My computer may never forgive me once I finish uploading all of these pictures. 

Later we went to a cheese and wooden clog factory. Apparently, they use the shavings from the shoe making to smoke the cheese. How convenient. I really wanted to buy some cheese for my mom and little clogs for my niece but I’d then have to carry it around for 5 more weeks, so I resisted. It was hard. Wouldn’t Hannah look adorable in some little wooden painted shoes? 

We finally arrived in Amsterdam just in time to get ready for dinner. Basically everyone under the age of thirty decided that we should stay out after our walking tour and see what Amsterdam had to offer. Which meant I had to run barefoot between the rooms half a dozen times to see what everyone else was wearing before I got dressed. Don’t ask me why because I ended up wearing exactly what I had planned on anyway.

Our tour of Amsterdam was almost entirely of the Red Light District. Obviously, I had heard of the area and I pretty much knew what to expect but actually seeing it was a different story. It’s just alleyway after alleyway of half naked women standing in glass doorways with bare mattresses behind them. All in all, there must have been hundreds of them. Some of the women were sexy and some were adorable, but others were fat, or old or just plain ugly. One part that cracked me up about the girls, was that none of them seemed particularly interested in anything outside of the their rooms. They were talking on the phone, texting or chatting with each other and most of them didn’t even look outside their window. It seemed like bad business sense to me but what do I know. However, the craziest part to me was not that there were all these women in bras and panties, or precisely placed straps, it was that this Indian family brought their eleven year old with them. I mean, Kevin was telling us the history of legal prostitution, and talking about sex slavery and even pointing out when a ‘transaction’ was taking place. She seemed pretty unfazed by it all but it kind of freaked me out. I wanted to cover her eyes and tell her to come back in ten years. 

Amsterdam

So many Bikes!

Amsterdam used to tax according to width. which explains the skinny buildings!

The only statue in the world celebrating prostitutes.

After we had our fill of window shopping, (:p I couldn't resist) the rest of the group left and we had Amsterdam to ourselves. Well along with five million other tourists. I had been really disappointed that we didn’t have time to go to Ann Frank’s house and museum. We were pretty sure that it was closed but my group decided to run over there anyway just in case. I don’t think I will ever forget the memory of running through Amsterdam in my mini skirt and flip-flops. Unfortunately, we were right and the Frank house was closed for the night. I know I’ve said this for everywhere I’ve been, but I really hope I come back to Amsterdam because I was really disappointed that I didn’t get to see the place where she lived when she was hiding from the Nazi’s. :(

Eventually we made our way back to the Red Light District because some of the group wanted to check out the famous coffeeshops. The one we went to was a bar upstairs and downstairs was a buying area and a smoking room. And yes, I went downstairs. For the million people that have been asking me, yes I bought a space cake.

Space cake!

 No I didn’t get high. Due to an unfortunate allergy to Marijuana, (Yes, I am serious) and the fondness I have for breathing, I didn’t get to go crazy in Amsterdam. But I refused to go home without at least some attempt at an Amsterdam story! So I shared a piece of pot cake with a guy in my group. The three bites I had did nothing to me but whatever, it was fun. A couple guys in our group scarfed theirs down in like three seconds flat. And then they went wandering around looking for more. The few of us left just sat outside the coffeeshop on the water, drinking and talking. It was a lot more chill that most people think of when they think of Amsterdam but I had fun. And we got to see all the tourists acting like idiots, fighting and falling down drunk. Free entertainment! 

Oh, I finally finished adding the pictures on the previous post for the cruise and such.