Off to AMSTERDAM

Drinks before hitting the town
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19/11/06

This morning we woke up and I enjoyed my first European buffet breakfast, who needs cereal when you can have salami and cheeses and croissants!! We then headed out for a bit of a walking tour around the main square and up to the royal palace area past some nice museums and to a perfect place for views of the city. We then had to head back to meet the bus for the drive up to Amsterdam!

On the drive to Amsterdam we stopped at The Hague, which was kinda pointless to me, I would have preferred to spend the extra time in Amsterdam I think! We arrived at our hotel and had dinner with the group before heading into the city for the night. We got dropped off and went into the first bar we saw, just to use the toilet however about 2 hours later we decided to move on. While in the bar we started asking some of the locals at the bar where we should go and what we should do etc and before you know it we’re having shots at the bar and heading out with our very own tour guide.

We took a walk through the red light district which was definitely an eye opener, rows and rows of woman sitting in their little rooms with big windows waiting for some ‘work’ to come along, it was really crazy! Roderick (our tour guide) then took us to The Grand Hotel which is where famous people such as Brad Pitt stay when they visit Amsterdam. It was a nice hotel and we went and had a drink at the bar just taking in all the surroundings! The next stop was to the green house ‘coffee shop’ which had the strongest smell of weed I’ve ever smelt, we went up to the bar and were handed a menu of all the different strengths of weed, it was really bizarre! Nat & I both don’t smoke it but felt it was a ‘must’ to try it whilst in Amsterdam, it would be a sin not to! We stayed in the café for a few hours enjoying some drinking and watching other people for a laugh! When we arrived at the ‘Mecure Hotel’ I was a little confused as I couldn’t quite see the 7^th floor that we were staying on, I thought it was due to all the drinks and marijuana that I’d consumed but no, this hotel only had 3 floors! When we went inside we realised we were at the wrong hotel, it was about 2:30am and Roderick felt really bad for dropping us off at the wrong place so then he found our correct hotel and we were cuddled into bed ready for the 6:30am wake up call…….. the day ahead would be very very long!