The highlight of our tour!

Welcome to us
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19/11/06

We headed to Amsterdam, stopped in a small place called The Hague.  We arrived about 6pm and checked into our hotel.  We had dinner with the group before having a couple of drinks in the hotel and heading into the city for the night.

We first started at a small bar where we got dropped off and met a local guy who we asked where we should go.  He showed us on our map but he ended up coming with us.  First he showed us the Red Light District which was just something else!  Streets and alley ways lined with red lights and under each a full length glass door, women inside with next to nothing on waiting for their next job!  Some of the women were absolutely gorgeous too!  Next stop was The Grand Hotel where the famous people stay when they come to town.  We felt strange just waltzing in and pulling up a seat at the bar.  The hotel was absolutely gorgeous!  The barman was really nice and pulled out the Guestbook for us to look at.  It included people like Vanessa Williams, Kelly Clarkson, Hilary Duff and loads more.  We got the barman's autograph and had a photo taken with him - he must have felt like a star himself!!

Grand Hotel Guestbook
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Roderic (our local tour guide) then took us to a place called the 'Greenhouse', we walked in and you could almost get stoned on the aroma!  We had no idea what to do here but Roderic helped.  You go to this bar and look at a menu with all types of different marijuana of different strengths.  We chose the mildest one in a small quantity as neither of us smoke it, but 'When in Rome, do as the Roman's do' as they say...  We had a little bit and sat down at a table and met some other people from Philadelphia, the oldest one introduced himself and his 20yr old son and 18yr old daughter who had been there since midday and it was then midnight!  They were there for a week on their 'family vacation' - strange 'family vacation'!!!!  We stayed here for a little longer and Roderic offered us a lift back to our hotel.  We got onto the highway and I was not real sure whether we were going the right way but oh well..  We got to the 'Mecure' and Karissa in the back said - 'I don't think this is our hotel' and 'Where is the 7th floor' (this hotel was only 3 stories high and our room was on the 7th floor) - sure enough it was not our hotel!!  We went inside and asked where the other Mecure was.  Roderic was very embarrassed and couldn't stop apologising - poor guy!  We finally  made it to the correct hotel about 3am and were grateful to see our beds!!

Karissa, Roderic & I
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20/11/06

This morning we had our wake up call at 6:30am, you can imagine how impressed we were with only having 3hrs sleep!  We slowly got ready and did actually make it to breakfast!  We started the morning with a Canal Cruise - just what we felt like doing - not!  We had a local tour guide that showed us the 7 bridges and Anne Frank's house.  The cruise was relaxing as I don't think Karissa & I would have been up for anything too exciting!  We then went to the Diamond Factory where they cut and set diamond jewellery.  Unfortunately we weren't able to sample any of the diamonds but we saw some 2crt ones that were so beautiful!

Dennis, Karissa & I
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We then set off to our next destination on the bus, and some much needed sleep for Karissa & I!