10:43 AM Amsterdam
For the
first time on this trip, we’re sleeping a lot and not walking a million miles
per day. The absence of soreness in my
legs and feet was surprising at first, but then I remembered that they’re not
actually supposed to chronically be hurting! Yesterday we got up around 9:30,
okay I got up at 9:30, Andy was sick all morning (see his blog post) so he was
up at like 6. Ha. The free breakfast included with the hostel is not good at
all, although it was probably made worse due to the fact that we really weren’t
feeling well yesterday morning… There is some bread to make toast, cut up apple
or orange, hard boiled egg and two choices for cereal, mystery flakes or
mystery cocoa pebbles. The coffee is
Nescafe (ouch, I’m really missing Marie’s breakfast!); the room to sit in to
eat is downstairs and has a really bad funk in the air that was making our
stomachs turn. Then someone came down
and sat next to me who smelled really bad… needless to say, breakfast was not a
very pleasant experience for us :P
After
going back to bed for a while, we got up, showered, and set out in search for
some decent coffee and food. We had some
crepes and coffee at a nearby bar where people were already drinking beers and
smoking (it’s about noon) and then a little while later, had a ridiculous
looking hot dog from a vendor. They were
hot dogs in a gigantic bun covered in cheese and pepperoni like a pizza. Talk about grossly delicious! Holland is known for its dairy, so there are
cheese shops everywhere and the cheese on this dog was delicious. The hot dog
itself? Well I’m a bit of a hot dog snob but these weren’t even as good as the
cheapest Oscar Meyers at home.
Amsterdam
is such a wonderfully chill city; you really never feel unsafe when walking
around. Even the narrow alleyways that
look dodgy still feel safe; and you know by now that if Amsterdam had a dodgy
section, Andy and I would find it. We
walked around the canals into a residential area and then through that to a
park by a college. We think part of what makes this city so chill is the lack of
traffic. Pretty much everyone rides
their bikes and the bike roads are almost as big as the real roads! You also have to be super careful as a
pedestrian, because the cyclists rule the roads. I saw this woman get massively “schwinned” by
a biker who was not about to stop because some tourist didn’t look both ways
before crossing the bike path! Public restrooms aren't very common around here, though, I actually had my first encounter with a bathroom that actually charges you (50 cents) to use the toilet. It's always a question of "where are we gonna pee?!" if we've been just wandering around for half the day and not sitting anywhere to eat or near the hostel. Today we overheard a couple frazzled Americans looking to find a toilet and one said to the other "can we just... go in and shit?" and Andy and I burst out laughing. Americans.
With our luck, we just bought Andy
a new sweatshirt the day before, only to have to weather turn from cold to
amazingly sunny and warms. We sat in a
plaza with a big Rembrandt statue in it and had ice cream (mmm Haagen Daas) and
got stalked by some excited pigeons. If
you can’t tell by now, we’re not really doing anything in this city except walk
around, sit in parks and eat! We got a
bottle of water from a convenience store and the guy short changed us by 2 €.
You have to watch out for that in Europe – a lot of tourists just assume
they’re getting the correct change back and don’t check. I read that it’s mainly people working
exchange booths but it could be merchants as well. Always know what your price should be, and
always count your change. Andy was
paying attention like always and we got our 2€.
The
street performers in Amsterdam are pretty exciting, we saw one guitarist (not
very good), a cello player (very good!) and a guy doing a trick/comedy show
involving a 10ft unicycle, knife juggle and whatnot. We stopped by and watched his show for a good
20 minutes (see the pictures when I post them!), we gave him the 2€ we almost
got short changed! We figure a guy who
can ride a 10ft unicycle while juggling machetes is deserving of our 2€ coin.
Ha.
We
spent the rest of the night at the hostel, blogging, organizing train tickets
to Switzerland, drinking (a little), and eating pizza. There isn’t really a ton to do in this city
outside of drinking and smoking. There
are some spots on the map marked with live music but who knows if that’s only
during the weekends and they’re not that close by the hostel. Today we’re walking to a large park with
spots on the map called “Do-Nothing Hang Out Spots” – our hostel owners do have
a sense of humor. So we’re off to do
nothing and hang out! We have to do our
laundry first though… what a drag. There
is a Laundromat right next door that we’re going to – apparently Andy’s sick of
wearing dirty clothes :P
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