The City of Many Bicycles

So, I haven’t been arsed to write about this before now, but last week I went to Amsterdam. From Wednesday to Saturday. Kat and I took a bus down and spent two whole days in the city before bussing back up again. Fun times. I’ve seen enough canals and bicycles to last me for a while.

But first things first, the bus ride. Approximately 11 hours according to schedule (which, you know, busses rarely adhere to) of cramped feet and boredom. However, we did meet some extraordinary characters. And by extraordinary I mean down right creepy.

• Creepy guy nr. 1: Irish, no teeth. Cut into the front of the line at the French customs, then turns around and grins (his very toothless grin) and goes “sorry for cutting in, folks, but we all have to wait anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.” Exactly. We all have to wait anyway, so you can just as well wait at the back of the line, kthx. Anyhow, Kat is not one to suffer fools, so she talks back to him and they exchange words, upon which he says “just blame the Irishman in me”, which is just nonsense. I know perfectly polite Irish people, that really is no excuse. Back on the bus Irish guy sits in the back and proceeds to shout across the entire bus to the bus driver asking him if he “enjoys himself” when he’s in Amsterdam. The bus driver answers “not in the way you imply, no”, upon where Irish guy goes “I could have meant the whores.” And a scintillating conversation about the red light district of Amsterdam continues. Shouted across the entire bus for everyone to hear. Yeah. And to top it all of, at the end of our journey when we’re approaching Amsterdam, Irish guy comes up to me and Kat and wonders if we fancy “meeting up” and share a joint during our stay. We politely declined.
• Creepy guy 2 and 3: The Innit guys. Two youngsters from England, approximately 16 years of age, said “innit” a lot. Kept Irish guy company. Looked like juvenile delinquents. Innit guy 1. Managed to full moon the entire buss upon bending over to get his passport from his bag. That was before we’d even started driving.
• Creepy guy 4: not so bad over all, but he was sitting two rows in front of us on the bus, on the opposite side of the isle, and kept turning around to look at us. All the time. But, he did laugh at all our jokes. Maybe he was just shy and his mother had never taught him that it isn’t polite to stare.

And on top of all, the bus driver was crazy. He forgot that he was stopping at Lille, and only remembered 20 minutes from Brussels, making us turn around and adding a couple of hours to the overall journey. Joy.

So yes, we had a very interesting bus ride, but Amsterdam itself was lovely. On Thursday Kat and I spent the morning walking around the city, looking at canals and bikes. In the afternoon we hit the zoo and took pictures of all the animals. I think half my pictures are of canals, the other half of zoo animals. Oh well. 

 

 

Friday we met up with Leah and did a boat sightseeing of the city, which was nice, as it was warm and cosy inside the boat. We also walked around a nearby park and looked at the ducks, and ate pancakes for dinner. Dutch pancakes are epic. This needs mentioning. If you ever go to Amsterdam, eat pancakes. For all your meals!

On Saturday was another wonderful bus ride, but thankfully a less exiting one than the first.