Wow. First of all, an apology to everyone who reads - we've been a little busy between traveling and sight seeing.
So here's the story on this post: Gabe wrote a fantastic account of what we did after class and Thursday night. I wrote up to the train, and he wrote all about the Red Light District and dinner and our hostel and everything. And I wrote Friday. But my computer is dumb and killed the whole post, so he's re-writing it when he gets home (which is in a few hours) and then I'll repost it. Sorry. In the meantime, you can see what else we did.
UPDATE: Here it is:
So, the train was delayed. Basically that means we had to get out of the train at the airport and take another one to the Central station. Together with a 16-or-so-year-old French girl, we got out and waited at the designated platform for our train. However, due to some error, the train was 5 minutes late, and due to arrive on another platform. With an ever quick French eye and lack of faith in foreigners who dont speak her language, the French girl declared that we should move stations to the one where our train happened to arrive.
Making the connection and finally arriving to our station of destination, we walked outside and were amazed. Partially we were amazed due to the amazing architecture of the actual station, it was basically a palace surrounded by canals. Most of our amazement, however, was derived from the thousands upon thousands of bicycles.
They were everywhere; attached to all the railings, parked in stacks and piles on a parking deck, and being driven by hundreds of people. The roads were fertile with bike tracks. Even when there was no road or sidewalk there was always a bike trail.
After some confusion, we made our way towards the docks and our hostel - yes, that's right; our hostel was a boat on a dock. It was pretty nice.
To get to it we walked on the edge of the red light district and past a cartoony-old ship that turned out to be the Maritime Museum. The lady in charge was really nice and helpful, and also really obviously high. The room had two bunks and a sink and the toilets and showers were in the hall. It wasn't a huge boat, but it had 14 or so rooms. We dropped off our stuff and decided to go explore and get dinner.
Between the two of us, we were really indecisive about what to do for dinner. So we checked prices and decided the resturaunts on the edge of the Red Light District were kind pricy so we decided to dive right in. It was a bit early so all we saw was some pot being smoked and two cops on horses who looked really happy - the cops not the horses.
After a walk around the block (literal) we decided on Chinese and walked in and sat down. We split a pot (literal) of tea because it was cheaper than a glass of water. For food Michelle ordered the wonton soup, which was good, and this other thing which was meat on a stick covered in a thick peanut sauce (sate), which was pretty good. I had what was basically fried chicken smothered in lemon flavoured sweet and sour sauce, which was good.
After dinner it was just dark enough that the Red Light District started to get interesting. We wandered for a bit and didn't take too long to find the two largest streets in the district, both with a large canal running through the middle. On the buildings side were hundreds and hundreds of windows containing prostitutes upon prostitutes. They weren't even really attractive either, maybe 1 in 10 was decent, but more than half were over weight and/or old.
Next to the prostitutes were sex shops which dotted the avenues periodically. Bars were also pretty common, but not as much as "coffe shops" which seemed to be everywhere.
There were also hundreds of beautiful, white, innocent, swans in the cannals in the Red Light District.
An hour or so passed and we decided to go in search of Space Shakes, which we found out (after asking rougly 12 coffee shop and bar owners) are illegal. You can only sell pot in its smokable and space-cakey form.
So we go to the nicest coffe shop we could find and bought us some space cakes, chocolate and vanilla flavored. We sat by the cannals outside a bar and ordered some drinks to enjoy with our cakes. Michelle ordered an apple juice which came in an awesome bottle. I ordered a coffee which was rich and dark and delicious and came with the nicest cream I have ever had - it was basically unsweetened concentrated ice cream. We split the chocolate one first, it wasn't too bad but not exactly the best brownie we ever had. The vanilla one we saved to see what exactly the brownie would do to us, and in the mean time we walked around.
About 30 minutes later it was late and we were tired and not feeling anything so we opened up the vanilla and ate that. Michelle found it quite bad, though i didn't mind it. We also saw the I AMsterdam sign and managed to snap a picture with no one on it after waiting a good 15 minutes for people to leave.
The walk back to the hostel was a short one, about 10 minutes, and we immediately brushed our respective teeth and laid down in bed. We talked for a while just to see if we would start to feel something. Michelle didn't really get buzzed at all, while I apparently was much more mellow. Overall it was pretty unexciting but we are still glad we did it.
Goodnight; WORLD!
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