Amsterdam
Warning: This blog entry is very long. It explains our (Whitney, Brighton, and myself) journey in Amsterdam.
Friday, July 21.
We woke up early this morning in order to catch our Tube ride to Liverpool St. and caught a train to Harwich. It took us 2 hours to get to Hook Van Holland by train, it was a long ride. Once we got to the Hook Van Holland, we got on the cruise ship called the "Stena Line". It had a movie theatre, a gift shop, restaurants, a play area. After we got something quick, but very expensive, to eat, Brighton and Whit took a nap in the booths while I listened to music the whole rest of the way to Holland. It was about a four hour cruise overall. When we finally got there, we were super anxious to see the city of Amsterdam, but we still had to get on another train ride there. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we were hurried to our hostel to drop off our luggage. As we walked to our hostel called the "White Tulip", we couldn't believe where we were. We were in the center of what is known as the "Red Light District" of Amsterdam. If you don't know what that is, look on Wikipedia and read the definition. There were nasty shops everywhere, drug shops, sex shops, everything you could possibly imagine. Naturally, we were getting pretty nervous to see what our hostel was like. We finally got there and immediately started to panic. This is what we saw....
This is our first view of our hostel room. There were three other women staying in room with us as well. Not to mention our bathroom was shared with the six men on the same floor as us. We were nervous, but decided to lock our luggage away and go see some sights.
This is the Royal Palace, about a block away from our hotel. There is a giant courtyard in front where there was a magician and tons of pigeons. The city is really dirty. We decided to take our mind off of the filth by going into a few gift shops, but we were about to be caught off guard.
Little did we know how dirty the gifts shops would be. There was tons of pornographic material in them, drugs, everything. This is one of the best shops we found and stayed in there for some time to try on wooden shoes. We were starving, so we got something to eat in a little cafe down the street. The food was fantastic. It got dark really quickly, so we hurried back to our hostel to get ready for bed. We took the small stairs up to our room and noticed a room of boys across the hall smoking marijuana. (P.S. weed is legal in Holland.) The smell was so strong, we hurried into our rooms. As we were checking out our sheets on our beds we noticed holes everywhere in them, which meant only one thing: bed bugs. We decided we would boycott the sheets and sleep on top of the blankets. This was a good plan, considering our hostel had no air conditioning. We fried to death. It was at least 95 degrees in our hostel in the middle of the night. Not only was it unbearably hot, but we were located right above a karoke pub. There was loud music playing till 5 in the morning, and a bunch of drunks singing along. We were so hot, we had to open the three small windows of our room. This, naturally, made the noise even louder. We tried to fall asleep, but we kept getting interpreted. A woman just walked into our room and started making one of the beds. This was about one in the morning. We were so confused, she didn't even knock, just barged right in our room. More women came throughout the night, making us feel more and more uncomfortable. At about 2 in the morning, a man barged in our room telling us to get out our tickets to prove we had paid for the night. We were so scared and confused, luckily we all had our tickets handy. About 3 in the morning, we just kept looking at each other in total bewilderment. We didn't know what to do. It was too hot to sleep and so we tried to come up with a solution. We decided there was no way we could sleep in the hostel another night. So me and Whitney took of on a search for any hotel that was available. This was the worst by far. There were drunk people everywhere. Some were smoking weed, so were trying to get us to go in the sex shops. There was even a man dressed in a leather thong and chains standing right next to our hostel door. We quickly ran hotel to hotel, all of them were full. We decided we needed to stick out the night and find another place in the morning.
After having 45 minutes of sleep at the most, we got out of our beds and hit the streets looking for an internet cafe to look up hotels in Amsterdam, not even considering the price it would be. We looked for about 3 hours and finally found a place to stay in the outskirts of town. We were so excited to be out of the Red Light District, we didn't care how far we had to go. The problem was, we didn't know how to get there. So we rented bikes and set off with all our luggage to our hotel that we had no idea where it was. We knew it was south, but had no idea which way south was. In fact, nobody in the city we asked knew which was south was either. We took a random guess and set off with a small map, three bikes, and our stuff. After a while, we got really frustrated. To top off the whole situation, it started to rain while we were on our bikes. We got so upset, we decided to go into the Marriott Hotel and ask for directions. The nice man drew us directions on a map, and it turned out we weren't terribly far away.
Here we are, trying to find our way to the Meridien Hotel. It was raining about this time, and we were about in tears. After about 20 minutes, we saw this glorious sign....
It was possibly the most wonderful site we had seen the whole
time. It took us about 2 hours total to get to our hotel on bikes. We finally checked in to our new place, which had air conditioning and private showers! We took a quick nap and decided we should go somewhere, since we are in Amsterdam.
We ended up here, at the Anne Frank House Museum. It was so cool. We spent about 2 hours there and got on our bikes again and went back to the hotel. We showered, actually I showered twice because I felt so gross from the hostel, and then went and got ice cream to help us cool down. That night I think I slept the best I have slept since I have been here in Europe. The beds were heavenly.
The next morning was set aside as our picture day. We took tons of pictures by coo l museums like the Van Gogh Museum, and this cool I amsterdam sign in a park. We also stopped at a bakery at got breakfast. Then we returned to our hotel and check out and walked with our stuff to the tram. We rode the tram to Central Station, and realized we were running late, really late in fact. We had 10 minutes to get our tickets and get on the train back to Hook Van Holland. We were completely lost, we waited in the wrong line twice, till we finally got frustrated and just found the platform and got on the train, without even getting our tickets. It turns out the Brighton had our tickets all along in her purse. We made the train by about 30 seconds. By the time we hopped on, it was started up. Lets just say that our prayers were heard.
Friday, July 21.
We woke up early this morning in order to catch our Tube ride to Liverpool St. and caught a train to Harwich. It took us 2 hours to get to Hook Van Holland by train, it was a long ride. Once we got to the Hook Van Holland, we got on the cruise ship called the "Stena Line". It had a movie theatre, a gift shop, restaurants, a play area. After we got something quick, but very expensive, to eat, Brighton and Whit took a nap in the booths while I listened to music the whole rest of the way to Holland. It was about a four hour cruise overall. When we finally got there, we were super anxious to see the city of Amsterdam, but we still had to get on another train ride there. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we were hurried to our hostel to drop off our luggage. As we walked to our hostel called the "White Tulip", we couldn't believe where we were. We were in the center of what is known as the "Red Light District" of Amsterdam. If you don't know what that is, look on Wikipedia and read the definition. There were nasty shops everywhere, drug shops, sex shops, everything you could possibly imagine. Naturally, we were getting pretty nervous to see what our hostel was like. We finally got there and immediately started to panic. This is what we saw....
This is our first view of our hostel room. There were three other women staying in room with us as well. Not to mention our bathroom was shared with the six men on the same floor as us. We were nervous, but decided to lock our luggage away and go see some sights.
This is the Royal Palace, about a block away from our hotel. There is a giant courtyard in front where there was a magician and tons of pigeons. The city is really dirty. We decided to take our mind off of the filth by going into a few gift shops, but we were about to be caught off guard.
Little did we know how dirty the gifts shops would be. There was tons of pornographic material in them, drugs, everything. This is one of the best shops we found and stayed in there for some time to try on wooden shoes. We were starving, so we got something to eat in a little cafe down the street. The food was fantastic. It got dark really quickly, so we hurried back to our hostel to get ready for bed. We took the small stairs up to our room and noticed a room of boys across the hall smoking marijuana. (P.S. weed is legal in Holland.) The smell was so strong, we hurried into our rooms. As we were checking out our sheets on our beds we noticed holes everywhere in them, which meant only one thing: bed bugs. We decided we would boycott the sheets and sleep on top of the blankets. This was a good plan, considering our hostel had no air conditioning. We fried to death. It was at least 95 degrees in our hostel in the middle of the night. Not only was it unbearably hot, but we were located right above a karoke pub. There was loud music playing till 5 in the morning, and a bunch of drunks singing along. We were so hot, we had to open the three small windows of our room. This, naturally, made the noise even louder. We tried to fall asleep, but we kept getting interpreted. A woman just walked into our room and started making one of the beds. This was about one in the morning. We were so confused, she didn't even knock, just barged right in our room. More women came throughout the night, making us feel more and more uncomfortable. At about 2 in the morning, a man barged in our room telling us to get out our tickets to prove we had paid for the night. We were so scared and confused, luckily we all had our tickets handy. About 3 in the morning, we just kept looking at each other in total bewilderment. We didn't know what to do. It was too hot to sleep and so we tried to come up with a solution. We decided there was no way we could sleep in the hostel another night. So me and Whitney took of on a search for any hotel that was available. This was the worst by far. There were drunk people everywhere. Some were smoking weed, so were trying to get us to go in the sex shops. There was even a man dressed in a leather thong and chains standing right next to our hostel door. We quickly ran hotel to hotel, all of them were full. We decided we needed to stick out the night and find another place in the morning.
After having 45 minutes of sleep at the most, we got out of our beds and hit the streets looking for an internet cafe to look up hotels in Amsterdam, not even considering the price it would be. We looked for about 3 hours and finally found a place to stay in the outskirts of town. We were so excited to be out of the Red Light District, we didn't care how far we had to go. The problem was, we didn't know how to get there. So we rented bikes and set off with all our luggage to our hotel that we had no idea where it was. We knew it was south, but had no idea which way south was. In fact, nobody in the city we asked knew which was south was either. We took a random guess and set off with a small map, three bikes, and our stuff. After a while, we got really frustrated. To top off the whole situation, it started to rain while we were on our bikes. We got so upset, we decided to go into the Marriott Hotel and ask for directions. The nice man drew us directions on a map, and it turned out we weren't terribly far away.
Here we are, trying to find our way to the Meridien Hotel. It was raining about this time, and we were about in tears. After about 20 minutes, we saw this glorious sign....
It was possibly the most wonderful site we had seen the whole
time. It took us about 2 hours total to get to our hotel on bikes. We finally checked in to our new place, which had air conditioning and private showers! We took a quick nap and decided we should go somewhere, since we are in Amsterdam.
We ended up here, at the Anne Frank House Museum. It was so cool. We spent about 2 hours there and got on our bikes again and went back to the hotel. We showered, actually I showered twice because I felt so gross from the hostel, and then went and got ice cream to help us cool down. That night I think I slept the best I have slept since I have been here in Europe. The beds were heavenly.
The next morning was set aside as our picture day. We took tons of pictures by coo l museums like the Van Gogh Museum, and this cool I amsterdam sign in a park. We also stopped at a bakery at got breakfast. Then we returned to our hotel and check out and walked with our stuff to the tram. We rode the tram to Central Station, and realized we were running late, really late in fact. We had 10 minutes to get our tickets and get on the train back to Hook Van Holland. We were completely lost, we waited in the wrong line twice, till we finally got frustrated and just found the platform and got on the train, without even getting our tickets. It turns out the Brighton had our tickets all along in her purse. We made the train by about 30 seconds. By the time we hopped on, it was started up. Lets just say that our prayers were heard.
posted by kfotheringham | 6:37 PM
2 Comments:
Sounds like this was a very eventful weekend. (At least you got a good-night's sleep.) Hope you have better luck on your next weekend trip!
lol you look good on your bikes...
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