Sex, Drugs, Ride & Stroll

About 10 minutes before we landed at the Schipol International Airport, the sight of the beautiful Amsterdam (pronounced: Am-I-really-there,damn! ~the I-really is sillent) was indeed a welcoming balm to a weary traveller's sore and groggy sight. The wide and flat land of the windmills covered by a thick blanket of dark cloudless early morning skies carrying with it a promise of a beautiful day. I can see this is a city that never sleeps from the many sporadic speckles of city lights, flickering below, oddly enough, they give a sense of urban tranquility not expected from a busy European port and party capital.

After clearing the customs (surprisingly quickly and easily, no evil fat men with greasy moustaches with rubber gloves in sight), I gracefully and efficiently purchased my train ticket heading downtown. Ok,ok, you know me too well. I literally stumbled my way through it, almost buying the wrong ticket and leaving my Lonely Planet guidebook behind at the ticket counter. Thank goodness at least they all speak good English, ja!

The train sation at Amsterdam Centraal was a hustle and bustle of human activities, I mean after all, it was 6am already! Thought this was suppose to be laidback society?!! Anyway, trying unsuccessfully to blend in with the crowd (perhaps walking with such a large backpack that made me look like a human turtle may have something to do with my failure to remain inconspicuous), I made my way out of the station and after a few false turns and cursing, I managed to find the Flying Pigs Backpackers. Had to wait until 8:30am before they would allow me to check in. Luckilly, they had a storage place for my 'turtle shell'which I happily dislodged and began to...sit on the computer (free internet provided at this place, excellent, more money to spend on my museum tours). Well, what else was I to do so early in the morning, no respectable museum will open at this time, believe me, I checked!

I checked in soon after into a mix dorm with 5 other ppl. I was warned not to go into the room until after the official check out time for last night's visitors at 10:30, unless of course I wanted to be greeted by 5 drunkenly asleep men wearing nothing except smiles on their faces, gee, what to do, what to do..backpack getting sooo heavy :P

(Backpacker located on a narrow street)

Anyway, armed with the backpacker's cheesy guide to discovering Amsterdam (already made a few discoveries in Amsterdam myself *cough*), I ventured out like a girl on her first day at school, excited but also scared of the unknown..

Foreign would be one word I would use to describe my intial impression of this canal weaven city. As you will see from the pictures I have taken, the architecture, city infra sturecture, sights and scenes that are so alien to what we are used to seeing in New Zealand. From the tall and narrow brick buildings, many built even before NZ was discovered, right to the millions of bicycles of all shapes, sizes and colour, you are filled with a sense of awe of the foreigness of it all. Kinda expected, but not to the extent as I have imagined.

In my short walk around the city, what I saw is a historical city with its small, narrow but hecticly busy streets, houses and buildings strategically located along the many canals and efficient trams (not like the old fashion ones we get in Chch, but more modern mini-bullet train looking ones). The people are mostly walking or cycling, just as we are outnumbered by our more wooly friends back home, the bicycles similarly outnumber the motorised vehicles here! The road system's very cyclist friendly, sometimes on one side of the street, you have two cycling lanes sandwiching a car lane. Of course it's also odd that everyone drives on the *wrong* side of the road! Although also full of pedestrian and cyclist crossings, the traffic law must be reasonably relaxed around here. So if you're crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing, don't automatically assume that you won't get run over!

(One of the many canals in the city)

(Beurs Van Berlage ~ old stock exchange building)

(A narrow street in residential Amsterdam, see the interesting window design?)

(Paleis [palace] located at the famous Dam Square)

Surprisingly after my walk, I felt quite refreshed depsite the jet lag. So much so, I decided to go for a run to the "nearby" Vondel park (kind of like what Auckland domain or Hagley Park is to us). Ok, mental note, when a dutch tells you anything is nearby, bear in mind that these people cycle and walk everywhere and so, a 45 minutes walk to the Park is considered nearby. It didn't help when you've never been to the city before and constantly having to stop your run to ask for directions. The park itself is very impressive as you will see in the photos. The pictures although speak more eloquently than I can write to describe their beauty, nevertheless, fair to say even the pictures do not do justice to the real thing. It is hard to feel anything but impressed by the serenity and charm of this Park, the tired legs soon forgotten.

A visit to Amsterdam will be incomplete without taking one of the boat tours through some of its popular canals. So together with a big group of Chinese tourists, we set off to explore Amsterdam by water, bathed in the evening sun. My facination of the city deepened as the city's history and tall tales were slowly narrated to us by a voice recording tour guide, in 5 different languages, very entertaining. From the photos I took, you will see the kind of boats we were in and the views that greeted us as we glide over the water.

(Some of the houses by the canal, very cool aye?

I have taken for granted how smokefree NZ is until I got here. I'm not just talking about pot smoke either. Almost everybody smokes here. It is actually a rare nasal delight when you can discover fresh clean air while walking outside. This perhaps would be my only disatisfaction with the city. Then again, I suppose this is all part and parcel of visiting a foreign land, the views and indeed the smell will be foreign. As there's many and I mean many small eateries, you also constantly get a whiff of fresh baking, coffee, cheese and Argentinian angus beef steak (saw 12 such restaurants in one day - ok, possibly I would have seen the same on 3 times during my many wrong turns..but still).

On the 2nd day, I went for a nice breakfast. Thought I would easily find cooked breakfasts but surprisingly, this was not to be. Main breakfast food there are like cereals or toast but mainly if you eat outside, often its fresh baked bread and other baking delights like croissants etc.

Went for more walks during the day including visits to the more subdued small residential area called Jordan where you can see more of the real Dutch life and less of the postcard picture type sceneries. It is so easy in this city to walk, walk and do more walking as unlike NZ where most attractions are spread out, here, they are all within walking distance to one another.

Visited the famous Reijkmuseum which features history of Netherlands and also paintings by many of its famous artists like Rembradt and Van Gogh (the latter having his own museum dedicated in his honour).

On my 3rd and last day in Amsterdam, I rented a bike from the "Yellow Bike" company and toured the outskirts of the city, trying very hard to remember cycling on the right hand side and not left! Wearing shorts helped to distract many motorists, mostly males surprisingly, leaving them stunned quick enough for me to escape from either being hit by them for being on the wrong lane or from being yelled at for going too slow. Visited the beautiful Vondel park, a nice botanical garden with lakes and an old museum located inside the park. Also managed to take one picture of a windmill, what tourist will I be if I don't at least get one picture of the windmill!

Amsterdam I have come to discover, can be pronounced in several ways depending on what the city means to you. Let's see, there's Damselham (window display of all sorts of meat, some a bit stale, and some smoked). Then there's And-where,WHAM!(And that is what happened when you don't constantly look out for cyclists coming at you from all direction!). And finally, there's also the Am-stoned,man! Think that's self explanatory :P

I will be rating each place I visit in Europe so for this one, AO's rating: Lots of enchanting, surprising sights and scenes, full of dangerous (yet exciting for many) deeds involving pot,pleasure and pedalling. So, we advise discretion.