Europe Trip 2016

Yesterday, we let ourselves sleep in until about 10:30 which had felt amazing considering we have been on the go since day 1.

Once on our feet and showered, we headed out to hit up some souvenir shops (classic tourists) before our bike tour.

We grabbed a tea from starbucks, and went on our way to find our meeting point for our bike tour. Let me tell you, we walked in circles... No worries.. With the help of some locals (and some not so helpful locals that pointed us in the wrong direction) we made it!!

This tour was 4 and a half hours late (yes, if you were wondering.. My butt is hurting today). Our guide, Sylvia, proceeded to take us to several places in Amsterdam and tell us about why the city is so beautiful and lively. She told us how the entire city used to be a port for launching ships and one day, they decided to build ARTIFICIAL LAND and create canals throughout the city to encourage growth ans trade! We biked through central station and a few of the nicer neighborhoods and Syliva told us why Amsterdam is associated with the three red X's (as youve probably seen in many of my posts).

The red Xs on the coat of arms originally belonged to a prestigious family that settled in Amsterdam prior to the artificial land building days. Amsterdam decided to adopt it as their own to represent the three huge problems they have had to overcome as a nation: Floods, Fires, and the Black Plague. A lot of people assume the x's are linked to the rid light district.

Next, we biked over to Vondale Park, the largest park in Amsterdam,where we found out it was once part of the hippie trail in the 1970s, and many people used to camp here to avoid paying for hostels. The government made this illegal in the late 70s and now, that area is one of the most expensive to stay in.

After, we biked through the museum district and near the red I AMSTERDAM sign the city errcted in 2004. The sign is supposed to represent the multicultural nature of Amsterdam and how the city is about more that just drugs, sex, and windmills - it's about leaving a bit of you here and taking a bit of the culture back!

Next up, skinny bridge! We saw the locks that they open every 4 days to keep the water in the canal clean and leveled. She also explained to us that people say the canal is 3 meters deep, 1 meter of water, 1 meter of mud and 1 meter of bikes. Over 20,000 bikes fall into the canal every year. In Amsterdam, there is also more bikes than people. They have an excellent bike path system where bikes have their own lights and rules apart from cars. She was explaining to me that after world war 2, people started biking because they didn't have any money & was alot cheaper than driving and faster than walking. She also said she sees 8 month pregnant women driving around on their bikes and new borns strapped across their chest. Oh and helmets also aren't a thing here.

We then drove past a canal with beautifier homes, she told me the price of living here is very expensive. It is about 300,000€ per 50 square feet. The houses here are built narrow but long (somewhat like our hostel 😑) because people used to have to pay a tax based on how much street room they would take up.

We biked by the Zoo, we didn't get to go inside but we did get to see some cool giraffes :)

Last stop: one of the oldest working windmills left in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, you are allowed to actually live in a windmill if you take a year long course on how to manage it and provide proper maintenance! This one had a small brewery attached to it, and we each had a glass of amazing beer for only 2.5 euro! Fortunately for us, we didn't even have to actually pay for the beer as we ran into a bit of luck and found 10 euro a little while earlier. Score! .

Afterwards we cycled back to the buke shop to drop off our bikes, and headed back to our hostel to get ready for the rest of the evening. We decided we wanted to check out the red light district tonight, so we bundled up (it was getting quite chilly!) and went out in search of food.

We grabbed dinner at this place called wok to walk & let me tell you....... 😋😋😋😋 so good. Better than thai express. We went over to the red light district where wifi doesn't exist.. So we couldn't meet up with our friends that we had met on our bike tour but we enjoyed our night regardless.

I was pretty disappointed with the district. Wasn't what everyone talked it up to be. Still weird to see women in the red rooms banging on the window trying to make you come in. Some were also just sitting there on their phones texting and talking. Pretty funny actually.

We went to go see a peep show.. & that's all you need to know about that.

Breanna and I decided that since we were in Amsterdam, we should probably smoke weed... you know, since it's legal and everything. We went into a coffee shop, where they handed us MENU for weed!? Say what??? We picked something random, cause we all know that we don't really know what we were doing. We walked outside & smoked a joint walking down the street... what a strange feeling. I was debating if I should put this in or not.. but for the memories I will. We were standing at a donut shop looking in. Breanna & Shaunessa were looking in and were mesmerized by all the donuts in the window... meanwhile, I couldn't focus on anything because it felt like my legs were shaking back and fourth 50 times a second. Two minutes later, I looked at them & all I could get out of my mouth was "I'm going to puke". I ran through the small alley ways in the red light district packed with people, to find a canal that I could puke in. Good news.. I didn't puke.

We sat at the edge of the canal for a bit and enjoyed the calmness of the light drizzle on the water and decided to call it a night.

We were going to go to bed early... Oh but look at that, we only got to bed at 2am... What a suprise 😏Read more