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The night before we ended up sleeping at 3am knowing we had a 6:24am train to catch from Gare Du Nord Paris to Amsterdam. We set our alarm to 4:30, but we accidentally actually set it for 5:30am. When the alarm went off, we literally got ready in about 10 minutes and started running to the train station. Fortunately for us, we made it with about 20 minutes to spare.

The weather in Amsterdam was considerably warming than Paris.

Upon getting out, the first thing to do would be to drop our stuff off our hotel. Unfortunately it took a little longer for us because I wrote down the wrong address on one of the papers.

One thing to immediately get used to was the excessive amount of letter in the dutch language.

Amsterdam is basically laid out in a circular grid with a bunch of canals creating concentric circles.

The water actually is quite murky though, like the Seine River.

Simply walking around in Amsterdam is quite an experience. It is like EVERYTHING is coming out of you from everywhere. There are tons of bikers as well as cars coming out of drive ways.

The first thing I noticed was the gay friendliness of the city. All the friendly establishments have flags on top.

Another observation we noticed is a lot of ‘orange’.

Orange apparently is one of the official colors of Amsterdam?

And of course, what is Amsterdam without its legalized drugs? Whenever you walk by these shops or coffee shops, you can totally smell weed coming out like no other.

Mellow yellow haha.

We were looking for a place to eat for lunch, and we passed by this place initially and eventually ended up going back on Ben’s suggestion that we find a local place.

So we kept asking all the locals if they spoke English, and later on found out that they ALL do. We asked some people next to us what was good and they said that the croquettes are the best in town here. They also suggested vleiss (turkey?) with peanut butter.

Picture of the menu

Intro video into the restaurant

Roast beef review

Warm vleiss. I ‘hope’ its turkey haha.

We began a Rick Steve’s guided city tour walk (its the tour book we had).

As you can see here they have their own dedicated bike lines everywhere.

In one of the center plazas they had a mock beach scene created.

It is sort of odd to see a beach scene created when this is right in your own backyard back at home.

Pretty lamp post

A big shopping center. By this point, we pretty much have veered from the guidebook tour and are just checking out random things at this point.

Another canal shot.

We saw some French kids in town and we wanted to do a French cheer we learned in Roland Garros, but we never ended up doing it.

Picture of an outdoor cafe.

And of course in Europe, you can get absinthe.

In the canals, you would see boats regularly sail through.

As you see here, there is a hook on top of the building where you can load things into your apt.

We were looking into this one house, and the guy inside said, “Are you looking for Anne Fronk’s house?” (in a heavy Dutch accent). We were like “what?” and he was like, “Anne Fronk, Anne Fronk!”. We were like ohhhh you mean “Anne Frank!” He led us down through this stair case which eventually led to a dead alleyway. He eventually fessed up saying he played a prank on us telling us that Anne Frank’s house was actually across the street. The guy was actually in some type of real estate and I guess was really bored.

More Disneyland type photos.

I’m guessing this guy smokes hehe.

What we eventually learned (aside from this sign being upside down) is that each bar specializes in one beer. So here you see Amstel.

The real Anne Frank house. The line was sort of long so we decided to come back the next day.

Taking a well deserved break.

A gay information point. I went in asking questions on the layout of the town, if everyone speaks English (they do because they learn since grade school), and good bars and restaurants to go to. We would eventually take one of his suggestions later for dinner.

An explicit picture, but an example of the liberalness of Amsterdam.

A store in the major shopping center. Nothing to do with gay stuff apparently.

Another gay friendly establishment.

All coffee shops are supposed to have some registered stuff in front to show if it is legal or not. I’m guessing that means there are some unauthorized coffee shops out there. Oh yea, coffee shops mean they serve weed.

More examples of crazy street signs.

What is interesting about Amsterdam is that there are no Starbucks in the city center anywhere. Instead we went until Bagels and Beans.

This was outside of our hotel.

Another fascinating thing is how close cars park to the canal. I can totally imagine a car going off into the canal by accident.

A pool bar. We would go here the next day.

In their mailboxes you would see “NEE” and all these listings. We were guessing it only allows certain types of mail through.

A sign near the gay information point.

In a city such as Amsterdam, it was quite odd to see a Christian Bookshop.

They sold weed starter kits in the open streets.

Public restrooms.

Throughout the city there was quite a lot of construction going on.

More spiky bars

Playground

Our hotel. We found it by looking through tripadvisor and doing searches on the Internet. No air conditioning, but it had a private bathroom which was nice.

Our room even had its own sink.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, the French Open Semis were starting.

For dinner, we took up the suggestion from a guy in the gay information point.

Specials.

Rob enjoying his beer.

I ordered lamb with an apricot glaze and cous cous.

Another interesting thing about the beer there was that each beer has its own glass.

My meal

Food review

Perspective of the area

The night was quite beautiful. The sun was still setting at 10:30pm which always was trippy for us.

Afterwards we went to the red light district. They don’t allow pictures in the actual district so we took it at the far end.

So if you want through the red light district, you see a bunch of women in the window tapping to lure you in. According to the other guys a lot of the women were hot hehe. The district really is only about 2 blocks long.

Later I wanted to go hit up some gay establishments. This place seemed like everyone was old so we went to the second place.

At the second gay bar, Ben was open to having a drink with me, and the bartender suggested Grolsch Cranberry Rose which was ‘vunderfal’. IT ended up being the best beer on the trip! As you also see here, we used money belts in Amsterdam.

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