Quinnsgate || London || Amsterdam || Berlin || Wolfsburg || Nürnberg || Plzen || Praha
Amsterdam
1 Euro = 1.25 USD

In Amsterdam we spent the first day in the Red Light District and the second day in the rest of the city. When we took our first train ride, we nearly got ourselves a 100 Euro fine each! In the train station where our bus dropped us off we bought the National Strippen Kaart knowing that we needed it to ride the inner-city trains. So when we get off the train at our station the waiting area is filled with police and they're checking to make sure everyone's strippen kaart is properly stamped. Well our kaart was not stamped at that point. So we decided to play dumb. We walked right up to the first cop we saw and handed him our (unstamped) strippen kaart and our passports all the while smiling and nodding like everything's ok. Lucky for us, this cop waves his supervisor over (who speaks English) and he proceeds to explain how we get the kaart stamped and where to get it stamped and then he lets us cut through the lines and points us to the exit. Whew! No 100 Euro fine!!

Finding ourselves a suitable hostel was difficult at first until, like a beacon from afar, I saw the Irish flag waving above a sign reading "Budget Hotel". Low and behold it really was a budget (with breakfast), so we decided to stay at the Durty Nelly. It was nice that they had their own bar-cat, named Rubles, as we missed our own cats back home. One last thing about Nelly's, they had the steepest set of stairs I'd ever seen, to that point. Note that the handrail goes straight up.

Some of the buildings there are so old that they've had to put up beams to hold back homes that are leaning forward.

So as we ran around the city finding sights like the Koninklijk Paleis (the parliament building), the Heineken brewery, the Train Station, and the WWI Memorial we found all kinds of surprises, like what you can buy for 12 Euros, houseboats, beer trucks that fill the bars with beer via a hose in the basement, beautiful churches, anti-NATO posters for an upcoming rally, more beautiful churches (note the weather), and Begijnhof, what we called the secret garden, as it was so hard to find.

Begijnhof had a couple of cool things in it. There was the 500 year old wooden building which is the oldest in the city, pretty statues, and a secret Catholic church that's right across the walk from the sanctioned English Reformed Church. The Catholic church was where the pilgrims worshipped while waiting for their voyage to the New World. In the big picture, above, the local church is directly behind Bonnie.

We found the skinniest and second skinniest houses. The skinniest place is 2.02 meters wide and the next skinniest is 2.44 meters. I like the skulls on the building next to the skinniest house and the second skinniest is now a sex shop. Oh and just so you know we did find the widest house, too. It's 22 meters wide.

On the second day we wanted to see the Van Gogh museum but the line was way too long and the entry price was as steep as the stairs at Nelly's. So, instead, we got some bread, meat, cheese, a couple of biers, and had a picnic at Vondell Park. It was really beautiful with all its gardens and fountains.


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