Yay! I am catching up with the blogss look at meeee oh yeah amsterdams da best whadduppppp?!
YESTERDAY, we woke up early, had some free breakfast, made some free lunch, and then went on a free canal cruise... (sorta). As I said in another post, Amsterdam is a city of canals. They wrap around the city, and are almost like streets; people live in houseboats (yes...boats that look like houses) and travel around this city on boats. They even have parties on boats! So of course, we had to be 100% tourist and take a canal cruise. Our hotel has a special deal with the canal cruise company so that we have to pay 10 euro instead of 13 if we buy the tickets from the hotel....so, thats what we did! We bought the tickets from the hotel, and went on the canal cruise. It was about an hour and a half long, and we passed a lot of pretty buildings but the tourguide wasn't very descriptive about what we were seeing...actually, it was a prerecorded tour that would say a sentence about something and then say the same sentance in like 5 other languages...which got really annoying (even though listening to dutch is always halarious). When we left the cruise, we realized that they didnt rip our collect our tickets, and because we werent so satisfied with the tour, we went back to the hotel and returned the tickets and got our 10 euros back because we told the people at the hotel that we decided we didnt want to do the cruise. so HAHA tourist trap! in your face! (sorry dad).
We were pretty hungry after the boat, so we enjoyed our ham and cheese sandwiches we made in the morning, and then walked towards Amsterdam's infamous floating flower market. There were tulip bulbs, souvenir shops, and pickpockets everywhere (dont worrry, we are cautious). I gotta say, the souvenirs here are the cutest so far. Slippers that look like traditional Holland wooden clogs and have cows on them for 10 euro??? Too cute. Should I get them?? (still havent decided, and every time I pass them i get more of an urge, however i dont need themm....hmmmm...what would tarbut say??) And a bunch of funny postcards, shot glasses, and weed paraphenalia that are all halarious (hey, its amsterdam). Neither of us bought anything because you cant really bring tulip bulbs back to the US, and we both wanted to do different things next so we split off. Rachel went to the Portuguese Synagogue, which is supposed to be very beautiful, and I went to the Heineken Brewery.
The brewery was sooo cool. It costs 15 euro, but it includes a free bracelet and 3 free drinks, and the whole 'Heineken experience' takes over 2 hours. It starts off by telling you the history of the Heineken company, and then leads into how beer is made and brewed. The four ingredients are Water, Barley, Hop, and yeast. Water and Barley make beer sweet and hop and yeast make beer bitter and ferment the sugar into alcohol. Heineken has a patented secret strain of yeast that they are obsessed with "which is why a cold glass of heineken tastes the same all over the world". I got to taste barley and water, called wort, which is sweet and good. Then we went though this thing called "brew you"which is like one of those movies where your seat moves and they spray water on your to make it more realistic, and it was like going thorough all the steps to a bottle of heineken, which was cute. There were a lot of photo and video ops in the whole thing and i took these ridiculous (and sort of embarassing) videos in front of a green screen that put me into a weird background....you can see one here:
http://www.heinekenexperience.com/wall-of-fame/singalong/4AE86361D99B6C8EED188B1EF34005C6
and another here:
http://www.heinekenexperience.com/wall-of-fame/singalong/F035B32FDCB5AEB50D1AC318DEB1196A
The whole thing ends in a bar where you can get your free beers and talk to other people which was cool. I have to say, I still hate most beer but I definately like Heineken more after all of that. At the gift shop I got a bottle of Heineken that says my name on it...SOOO COOOL. Its goin in the dorm room for sure.
After we met back at the hotel, Rach and I enjoyed some japanese at this chain that we've seen in all the countries so far called Wagamama (yummayumma! we might go back tonight!), and then headed to the Red Light Distrcit. Let me tell you, we were SHOCKED. It was very different from the way both of us pictured, but still INSANE. Basically, the area is pretty small, but its broken in half by a canal. There's a church in the middle of it, and around the church is where the most prostitutes are (ironic....). There are all these really narrow alleys, and when you walk through them there are like glass doors with a red UV light above them. In the glass doors are girls in like bikinis and skanky clothes looking at you and like winking at you and saying hello...(super weird...getting eye contact with them is so sketchy and freaky). Each glass door is attached to like a little room that has like a mirror, a bed, and a chair. The glass windows have red curtains, which are closed if the room is occupied (oy.) Its actually ridiculous...its like disgusting but reall interesting at the same time and really trippy. Its kind of fun to try and find all the alleys, because its like a maze and the prositutes are like sort of hidden so we were like 'we have to find more!!' Its interesting though because it seems like for the most part, its tourists walking past the windows and occasionally there will be a few high guys flirting with one of the girls but it doesnt seem like too many people actually go in with the prostitues, its just sort of to look. Rach and I were left with so many questions, like are prostitues in amsterdam like they are in the US(sketchy really poor women who have to do it to make a living and who are also like crackheads)? Or are the like the ones in Israel (captured and sort of owned and forced into it)? Or do they actually enjoy their job and make a lot of money?? So many questions....but it was too scary to ask any of them anything. Some of them looked really young, like our age, which was so weird...anyways....outside of that area with the church, there are some more main-ish streets which have a lot of sex shops, "coffeeshops", and paraphenalia shops. Its a crazy place....we might go back tonight.
Cheers,
Zo
No comments:
Post a Comment