Ahhhh!! I can't believe I am actually here. I think it's
SOOOO unreal. Europe is sooo great! It's only been 2 days but I'm really loving this place.
Warning: This entry is diesed.
We departed Canada around 6/7pm. The plane ride was long. 7 or 8 hours I think. We rode the KLM and it was a diesed plane. There were some turbulents but the ride was good. Service was excellent and I watched 17 again, LOL.
When we landed, I was in
awe. The airport was nice as hell and so was everything else. Once I stepped out of the airport I was soo overwhelmed. Sooo unreal!! We checked into our hotel and as much as we wanted to tour the area, we had to sleep. The time difference is so insane. It was morning here and we didn't get any sleep on the plane. I'm dying! The hotel we are staying at is under Best Western. It's a four star hotel but it's not as great as the hotels in Canada. I had really high expectations of the hotel. The free wifi connection made up for this :) Thank goodness we brought laptops.
Since it was afternoon when we woke up, we decided to tour around a bit. Once again, I was in complete awe. It's so different. So cool. I took loads of pictures. The people here speak Dutch and English (thank God). One of the many things I saw that I love about the area here in Amsterdam are the bikes. There are separate lanes for bicycles and practically everyone is riding one to get to wherever. There are literally piles of bikes in the bike racks. I seriously wish more places had this. The bikes are simple looking but it's eco-friendly and you get to ride around in the nice weather. Toronto needs this. I'm craving a bike ride through the city now. The area is too interesting to be looked at through windows.
We ate some chinese food and walked around the place and took the tram (I wanted to bike) to this square with a plaza, a bunch of stores, river canals, people, and smoke. Yes smoke. A lot of people are smoking here, whatever it may be. It's pretty jokes. We entered a plaza that looked like a church from the outside. It was huge!.. sadly so were the numbers on the price tags of the clothing. Everything was soo expensive but very fashionable. EXCEPT one store called Amercan Way or something that basically had the reject clothes of the American Eagle and those brands. The Euro is worth a lot and the money looks cool. I bought a postcard and some clothes at a store we found that is almost like a Winners except the clothes are nicer. Woo :D
What I found very interesting was the "Red District". It was dirty in both ways. It's basically the "Bad" (if that's what you want to call it) area of Amsterdam. It was daytime when we walked down this epic area. There we saw hookers, prostitutes, multiple sex shops, some erotic shops with live sex shows, and a bunch of marijuana and hash museums. For the curious ones, the hookers/prostitutes are inside the flat sided houses that line the sides of the streets and they dance and arouse the people walking by through the windows. The hooker can open the window/door and invite a willing watcher she fancies. Some of them are sooooo butt ugly. And some look like they are 15. Kinda weird. Even though it's weird, it's a very famous tourist attraction. Since it was daytime, we didn't fully experience the "hooker experience" LOL. It's apparently really nice there at night because of the lights and the river canal that lines the centre of the street. The place screams STDs. LOL what an explanation. This explanation is like a whole damn paragraph. We weren't allowed to take pictures of/with the hookers fyi. LOL
We explored a lot of this square but during the tram ride back to the hotel, I realized that there was sooo much more that we didn't see. Touring is great. Oh yea, you have to pay to use public washrooms here.
So that was my day. I'm in the hotel room writing this while watching some Dutch TV programs. Spongebob in Dutch is tooo funny!!
Hope everyone in Canada is doing well!
- mic from Amsterdam
