I AMsterdam

It’s time to kickstart my European summer travel plans and the first destination on the list is Amsterdam! I’ve arranged myself to go with a group consisting of Carl, Hannah, Carolyn and Wai Yi. The planned period was from 22nd June till 26th June and we were supposed to take Jet 2 down from Leeds to Amsterdam on the morning of 22nd. Due to some miscommunication (me not reachable because of phone problems), WY did not purchase my tickets since she could not get confirmation from me. I tried to get the same flight on the net but just within the time period of 24hrs, the price had risen way beyond the 9.99 pounds to some ridiculously priced 40-50 pounds. The only 9.99 pounds ticket was the evening before on the 21st. I figured out that I should take a chance with that instead of paying unnecessarily. This leads to two options of either going to downtown Amsterdam to stay for a night a hostel or to sleep overnight at the Schiphol airport. Once again, financial considerations had led me to pick sleeping at the airport but I’m confident that it’s not going to be a bad experience. The key is not to leave the transit area of the airport. I did some research on the net about sleeping at Schiphol airport and the reviews weren’t too bad. I had personal experience at Schiphol’s transit area from my transit time at the airport in September last year and I would say its facilities are top class.

So, on the 21st, I made my way down alone to Leeds airport to take the flight. I arrived at Amsterdam around 6.30pm local time. With so much time to kill, I decided to go around to look for dinner (other than McD) that won’t blow up my pocket. My search was not too successful because in the end I still ended up eating Dutch McD because the other food areas were just too expensive. After eating, I went around to find a suitable place to sleep. I was thinking of the chairs near some bistro which I had seen but the characteristics of those chair would not allow me to lie down. The other one was the lounge area with some comfortable sofas/bean bags but the problem is that it may get pretty congested later in the night and there won’t be any privacy. Somehow I bumped onto a section know as “comfort chairs” (lol) and they are perfect! These chairs are reclined with a leather padding overlooking the runway. The section that I went to was not really populated by lots of people. I spent the rest of the night there with my newly acquired netbook and used part of the free 1 hr internet to log onto FB. The 8hrs of sleep was great as I was the only one in the area and I woke up being greeted by the sunrise at the runway. Voila! One night of accommodation saved!

In the morning, my area became rather congested though because flights are coming in. It was time to shift myself to McD since I’ve told WY that I’ll meet them there. I bought myself a McKroket for breakfast which I was feeling rather curious to try. McKroket is only available in the Netherland. After munching on the burger, I have no idea what filling the patty was, other than the feeling that it tasted like mashed potato fried in breadcrumbs. WY and the rest soon arrived and after breakfast, we checked out of immigration without much problems. The first thing to do now is to take a train down to the city center and look for our hostel. One of the first interesting sights that I saw at the train station was the double-decker train which we took to downtown.

It did not take long for us to find the hostel but we could not check-in because we were there too early. We left our bags at the counter first for them to store and then off we went to the main square to catch the free tour. Just like the one in Paris, the free tour gave us a rough idea on where to and what to expect around Amsterdam. We went back to the hostel to check-in after the tour. The room is quite cramped for 5 people. Basically it has 2 double decker beds and one single bed thrown into the middle. I took the middle bed..haha. It was stated that Wi-Fi is charged but we were able to access it without the password anyways, so charge attempt fail. In the evening, we went to pay a visit to Anne Frank’s house, which is now a museum. It was a long queue to get in and to make matters worst, it was raining with strong winds. My pathetic 1 pound umbrella got destroyed in the process and I had to get drenched with my jacket on. We managed to gain entry eventually. Since the museum does not allow camera, I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the interior. Anyways, the layout inside the house is very simple, most of the original furniture had been removed except for a few. The secret attic chamber is still there. Since there were so much of visitors in the house, it gets rather cramped and very often a long stretch of queue forms as we navigate through the narrow corridors of the house. At some sections, we can’t stop the read because the narrow corridor would mean that we would have to continue moving so as not to hold up the people behind. At the end of the museum trail is a small exhibition on the Holocaust in general. We went back to the hostel pretty early at around 8pm also after getting our dinner.

On the next day, we took a bus down to the outskirts of Amsterdam to have a look at one area with lots of windmills. The windmill is one of the trademark symbols of the Netherlands but it’s not the only thing that is found there. There’s a cheese shop which makes traditional Dutch cheese and also a Dutch clog factory. We did a small walk around the area, filled with streams and rivers before proceeding on to the clog factory. I had the opportunity to watch how a clog was made from a block of timber. After feeling satisfied going around, we took a bus back to the city centre. The group decided to rent bicycles to go around Amsterdam instead of taking the public transport. I was a little apprehensive but decided to give it a try since one of the Amsterdam experience is to try riding a bike around the cities like the locals. You see, the problem with Stan is that most of his cycling days are in a park. I have no problem riding a bike, but add cars zooming beside you and other impatient cyclists along a narrow strip of pathway sound alot like a recipe for disaster. Anyways, we cycled to a nearby park so that Carolyn can have a crash course on biking. That took quite some time and when we were done, we cycled back to city centre to park our bikes somewhere before heading off to search for food. Mhmmm..food choices are a little bit hard because everywhere seems to be expensive but we settled to eat at one Italian bistro in the end.

We started off the 3^rd day by checking out the wet market. It was literally wet because the morning weather was gloomy and it was drizzling all over the place. There ain’t much to see because tulip season is over and most of the stuff that are being sold were gardening materials. We proceeded next on our bikes to the Heineken factory. This was the original brewery which was first established in Amsterdam. Hmmmm..I never knew Heineken was Dutch..lol. The museum was quite interesting as it provides some information regarding its origins. There’s also demonstrations on how beer is created. The room with the giant boilers were preserved for visitors to see and those metallic containers are huge! We get to sample Heineken straight from the tap too. At the end of it, we were given two complimentary pints. We redeemed one only though because drinking 2 during an afternoon may be a little too much. Besides, there is a risk that we may be too drunk to ride a bike too..haha. I got myself an interesting souvenir – a Heineken bottle of beer personalised with my own name on it. It’s only 5 Euros and the only setback is that I need to pay another 5 to transport it across back to England. We returned our bikes to the rental shop at around late afternoon and at that time, I was feeling relieved to be able to walk on two legs instead of man-handling the bike in congested Amsterdam. Nevertheless, I have to say that cycling in Amsterdam itself is quite an interesting experience. We spent the remaining evening just exploring Amsterdam on foot. The red light district was an ubiquitous feature and we were warned not to take pictures of the booths because they don’t like tourists doing that. Other than the red light district, there are numerous shops selling everything related to love-making – condoms, DVDs, live shows. Weed of course is another prevalent substance distributed throughout the city and they can be easily obtained from the 200 over “coffeeshops” spread all over Amsterdam. Some of these coffeeshops don’t only sell weed-smoking services but also various other cakes laced with weed (which they call space cakes) and some weird nonsense known as magic mushrooms.

On the final day, we did a short visit of the city’s Heineken souvenir stall before heading off to the airport to catch a flight back to Manchester. Ahhhhh, Amsterdam has certainly been fun and eye-opening at the same time.

P.S. While I was in Amsterdam, I received rumours and congratulations at Facebook for my exam results. You see, the provisional exam results are to be out while we were holidaying in Amsterdam. While hundreds of law students are eagerly checking their results, WY and I are two law students who are still lepaking in Amsterdam, having no idea or confirmation of our results other than rumours from friends. Now, I didn’t want to get excited over anything while I was in Amsterdam and I shut out any news on the results from others because I really wanna enjoy myself without thinking about exam results. The confirmation of classification will be finalised on 1^st of July. Till then, I ain’t gonna speak anything about it!