Sex, Drugs and Making Memories

Yes I went to Amsterdam, no I didn't solicit a prostitute, and no, I didn't try drugs. But oh man, what a weekend.

It was about a 14 hour bus ride from Swansea to the Netherlands and to cross the English Channel we took a ferry from Dover to Calais, France. We spent a good amount of time driving through Belgium, but we didn't have time to stop to buy chocolate on the way home. Tear.

But once we finally got there, we checked into our hostel. There were about 50 of us, 3/4 American, another eighth Canadian, and the rest Spanish or English or Welsh.

Michelle, one of the Canudians, Carrie my flatmate from New Mexico, Margaret, a Welsh classmate from New York and I started visit with an ATM stop, mozzarella, tomato and pesto sandwiches and a CanalBus tour of the city. I took like a hundred pictures of buildings from the boat, all of which start to look the same, and by the middle of the second day, my camera was dead.


Thank goodness Carrie's still worked.

But anyway, after the CanalBus we took on the Heineken Experience, a tourist attraction that includes a walk through the original Heineken brewery, no longer in use, three beers and a "free gift" all for 10 euros. It was pretty cool, to be honest.

A bit buzzed, afterward we grabbed dinner at a Japanese restaurant where we had no idea what we were ordering. Oh, traveling. I ordered red wine and got something that was on ice with lemon and tasted like a cross between a Long Island and some kind of blush wine. My bill said it was sake, so maybe it was, but I really have no idea.

Anyway, then we went to the Van Gogh Museum. It was incredible to look at his work. No, they don't have Starry Night there, that's in New York. But they did have more than 200 of his paintings, from all his different eras. Carrie and Michelle didn't enjoy it as much, but they're not really van Gogh fans either. There was live music in the main gallery that could be heard throughout the building and also Monets and Manets and Paul Gaugins. I loved it.

We headed back to the hostel after that, it was late and we hadn't really slept well except on the two-hour ferry ride. We hung out in the hostel bar and caught up with all the other little groups of Swansea students that were tired too before we went to bed.



The next day, we slept in a bit, had breakfast at the hostel. It was like having lunchmeat sandwiches, toast with the Dutch version of Nutella, juice and tiny cups of strong coffee. I'm not complaining, it just definitely wasn't a normal American breakfast.

We used one last ride on the CanalBus to get to the northwest side of Amsterdam, where the Anne Frank House is. We waited in line about an hour to get in, but it was totally worth it. It was a very sobering experience, thinking about how she and seven other people had lived there for years before being found. It was larger than I expected, but still very small for so many people. Unlike when I went to the Jane Austen exhibit, I'd actually read the Diary of Anne Frank. It was a few years ago, but with the few quotes posted in the rooms and being able to put a real visual with her words, I remembered it a lot more clearly than I thought I would.

Our plan after that was to grab lunch and head back to the hostel before meeting some other people to go to the Red Light District later that night. But I was navigator, and between eating lunch, taking a detour to stop in a shop and go through a flea market, I got turned around and we walked in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes, making twists and turns until we finally asked someone.

When I say most of Amsterdam looks the same, I mean the part around the canals. There are three concentric main canals and several others that cross and parallel them, making the city look like a spider web from a bird's eye view.

Once we figured out where we were on the map, we were fine. We were just 45 minutes north of where we wanted to go. We made it back, but I thought Carrie was going to kill me. All she wanted to do that afternoon was buy a pin from Hard Rock for her dad. We got there. We just took the scenic route.

The rest of us bought trinkets and scarves and hats from a street vendor. Then we met up with the other group back at the hostel, got ready for the night and went back to where we'd been a few hours before.

We walked parallel to the Red Light District down Ronkin to the Sex Museum. Now that was entertaining. It was only 3 euros to get in. Hilariousness. It was what I expected. A lot of photographs, older and newer, and a lot of old drawings dating to before photography. There were also several, um, artifacts, and a special exhibit about Marilyn Monroe. It made me proud to be an American.

After that, the ten of us walked over to Warmeosstraat, two blocks west of the central Red Light District. I'm pretty sure every person we saw there was stoned. The street is full of coffeeshops where brownies and what not are served. Highly entertaining.

It was still fairly early, maybe 9 or so, and we were in Amsterdam. So we decided to suck it up and walk down the main drag of the Red Light District.

You hear about it, you see random pictures sometimes, but, at least for me, there's something that says, "No, that's bullshit." But it was real. Red lights everywhere. Red curtains pulled in half the windows. And in the other half, there are prostitutes. Younger, older. Most of them strangely attractive. And all dressed to entice customers, but none of them completely naked.

I would guess that it was about a 10 to 1 male to female ratio, and of those men, they were anywhere from 20 to 50 years old. We saw an older, heavier guy trip and fall, flat on his face. I think he was trying to communicate with one of the hookers through her window, but he was so wasted, he just lost his balance and fell over in all his gesturing.

It took us about 10 minutes to cruise the street and you could feel a collective relief when we reached the end. It wasn't that we felt unsafe. It was just a really odd place to be.

We found a Mexican restaurant close to our hostel, had some dinner and then went back and hung out in the hostel bar until we couldn't stand it anymore. I was soo tired.

We left early the next morning. Overall, I liked Amsterdam. It was really a clean city, unique with the canals. If I lived there, I would die in the first year. Not because of the drugs or the sex elements, but because I would get hit by a bike. No joke.

According to the Amsterdam board of tourism, there are 600,000 bikes in the city. Almost every street has a separate lane for them, and where there's not, bikers have the right of way, above walking pedestrians and cars. Seriously. And while we're on numbers, there are almost 739,000 "inhabitants." That means about 80 percent of them ride bikes. It's craziness. They park them everywhere.

Also, there are 165 total canals, 2,500 houseboats, 141 Rembrandts, 206 van Goghs and almost 16 million visitors a year. Unbelievable.

So, in short, that was Amsterdam. It was cool. The end.