6 days in Amsterdam

Monday, August 4th, 2003 —

27.07.2003

we arrived in Amsterdam Schiphol early and headed straight to the city (20 min train ride, 3€)
we had the directions to the first hostel, the Bulldog, but w/o a citymap, we wandered around a while until we could find it. It was located on a street next to the red light district =)
after we left our luggage there, we walked around some more, but the streets were kinda desert (sunday mornings… ). Sat down in a park and fell asleep
we bought a map with some sightseeings on it, so we (we = {Aïsha, Anya, Manuel}) decided to go see the Westerkerk (=western church) and climb up the tower to have a top view from Amsterdam. Unfortunately, it was closed… so we sat down on a bench and slept a little more
end of afternoon: made a little canal cruise… t’was nice
back to hostel
dinner: very very very spicy -i had tears in my eyes!- thai food… mmmhhhh good!

shower in the morning, coz the beds didn’t look/smell clean, but the shower itself was dirty and smelly =(
visited Anne Frank’s house. Interesting and scary, although absolutely not how i imagined it would be. first, i didn’t know the story ‘played’ in Amsterdam. second, i thought the hiding place was mucho smaller. how can everyone NOT notice a 3 stories building??!?? but then again, i was kinda small, if you consider being stuck in there for 2 whole years!
Anne Frank’s house is right next to the Westerkerk, so we went up its clock tower to enjoy the view (see pics… )
after so much cultural blah, we needed to rest a bench (an ‘activity’ that became more and more appreciated as the days passed)
we finally found a supermarked: Alfred Heijn (or something like that). Of course now that the first one was discovered, we realized that there were a whole bunch of it… bestest: the have cherry coke! that made my day (… pathetic… )
we took a walk to Oosterpark
dinner: mexican. spicy again.

the day b4, the Westerkerk’s tour guidess (?) said that every tuesday there was a small bell concert, so we wanted to check it out, but with all my respect to the bell ringer (?) it was crappy
wandered around in the city
bought some more cherry coke
in the afternoon, we visited the ‘Heineken Experience’. it was kinda disappointing as it didn’t really help me understand how beer is made. one fact i remember too well is that they need 7 bottles of water for 1 bottle of beer… what a waste. the Xperience costs 7€ and you get 3 free beers (or more if your sister don’t drink theirs ;-P )
visited a small market, which turned out to be painful, coz i needed to pee really bad… beers…
dinner: italian… meaning pizza. nothing special. the search for a restaurant lasted way too long that evening! we were starving and just went into the next closest italian place
sat on Dam, watched people…

we had to leave our first hostel for another one, located a little farther away from the center. b4 we left, i wanted to check my emails, but the computer was so fucking slow that it took all of my 10 min quota to load the browser… such a pain in the ass
the 2nd hostel was mucho cleaner and nicer than the first one. it actually was like a standalone appartment and the dude renting it lived upstairs. on a side note, he looked gay
back in town, bored… shopping (i won’t get into the ‘shopping with girls’ discussion)
dinner: american, i.e. McDonald’s

got up around 10am after a long restful sleep
went to the supermarket to buy some pseudo-breakfast
headed to Centraal Station (train station) and bought tix to Koog-Zaandijk to see some traditional dutch windmills. t’was nice
dinner: thai again, same place as on sunday… chinese food is bestest food

6th and last day had been declared shopping-day
blahblahblahblah
i had friday tradition =)
the flight back to Geneva was cool. towards the end, as we were flying over Suisse, we could see all the fireworx going off for the national day. one actually hit the plane, and one engine caught fire. the pilots had trouble keeping the machine under control. all the passengers were screaming […]