WEATHER: A little breezy 14C – but the sun is high in the sky, welcome back!!
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY : Walking around Amsterdam during the day
BUMMER OF THE DAY:
BUYS OF THE DAY: A mini bottle of Amsterdam vodka and absinthe for 9EUR
WORD OF THE DAY: - I will not f@ck you – famous last words from sex show last night!
Well the last blog was all about the night life of Amsterdam, which to some was probably shocking, but I am happy to report that the city does have other things to offer than sex and drugs! I didn’t see too much of it today, but I have been here before and I have seen Anne Frank’s house ( there was a 45 minute wait to get in but if you haven’t done it it’s worth the wait ) and the Reikjick Museum. There is also a Van Gough Museum in the city, but after seeing the Van Gough’s in The Hermitage in St Petersburg, what additional could I have seen there? I would have liked to have made it to the Heineken Brewery but it didn’t open till 11am and we just wouldn’t have had enough time to do that and get back to the meeting point. I didn’t want to miss the coach and have to catch a train to our next stop!!! So I guess I was lucky enough to be able to just wander the streets and take in all of the canals, picturesque bridges and the red light district during the day. The recovery from Queens Day was still in full force, but looked so much better than it did at midnight last night!
The red light district really isn’t much during the day, the sex shops are all open, and some of them are quite ‘out there” with the stock they have and as the girls weren’t working, we were able to take photos that we weren’t allowed to last night. We did see a few ladies in the windows, but at 10.30am on a Sunday that is keen, even in Amsterdam? Three things that rate a mention was the i-come and the i-bod and yes they both have something to do with your iPod’s and they vibrate to give you an idea, and I saw these cute pink rabbits, 100’s of them in a window and I was thinking of buying one for my god-daughters till I got closer to the window and they had a very large penis, on a stuffed toy!!! It would have been funny to send home, just to see the reaction on Shelly’s face but then thought better of it!!!!!!
We also saw ‘seed banks’. Yep you can go into these seed banks I assume, purchase the seeds and grow your own stuff? Is that legal? The shops also had cannabis lollipops, cannabis tea, marijuana chocolate, cannabis vodka and the list goes on. Would that stuff get through customs I wonder? I’m not taking any chances, can you imagine getting drug swabbed at an airport in Africa and I come up positive – yeah no thanks!
Also known for tulips (and responsible for 2/3 of the world’s fresh flowers) Edam cheese and other cheeses and rides on the canals there are tours you can do in connection with these but once again time was of the essence and this trip is really to give you an overview of a place and work out if one day you would like to come back.
Mags, Anusha, Narin and I did lunch on one of the canals before meeting up with the coach at 12.45pm to start our drive to Germany. I’m really enjoying the coach at the moment. Time seems to pass pretty quick when we are on the road, and with stops every 2-3 hours it breaks up the time aswell. Considering there is 51 of us on the coach, we all seem pretty well adjusted to our new home. We travelled for 2 hours before having a 45 minute stop ( for Pete ) and then travelled another 2.5 hours to find us now in Germany and in a small town called St Goar situated on the banks for the Rhine River. Dinner was served at the hotel before we headed off to a small 17th century cellar ( yes this cellar was built before Australia was a twinkle in Captain Cooks eye ) and we got to try some of the local wines produced in the area. The ambience was pretty cool, wine tasting by candle light and a great way to meet some more of my fellow Contikier’s ……
It is nice to be able to have a chill night tonight in St Goar before heading into bustling Munich and then spending 4 nights in Italy, I think I will need to recharge my batteries for the coming days ahead.
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