Day 6 - Ferry to Rotterdam / Amsterdam

I woke up early, made a coffee and spent some time drifting around the ship. At that time it was like a ghost ship, absolutely no one around and everything packed up and cleaned. Took some photos, worked on this blog for a bit. As the morning went on people started emerging, and the PA announced it was breakfast time. A few more announcements from the PA later I wandered back to cabin when we had 30 minutes left before docking.

Buckie was still fast asleep, apparently the PA was not working in our cabin. We did later discover that it worked weakly in the bathroom but you couldn't hear it if the door was shut.

I made myself another coffee as Buckie was going through the wake-up stages. He pointed out the coffee sachets I was using in fact contained decaffeinated coffee. I immediately dropped them as if they were molten hot. Why do these things even exist??? Are people really drinking instant coffee for anything else other than the caffeine? I even went through the garbage to confirm the sachets I'd used earlier were normal coffee.

Having sanitised my hand after touching the decaf, the ferry pulled up in port. Rotterdam had a very industrialised port with expansive facilities. Lots and lots of liquid (I assume oil) storage tanks. Buckie reclaimed his gin from the service desk and we took the shuttle that we had arranged prior, as the wharf we docked at was in the middle of nowhere,

Walked around the city took in the art. Amazing gardens and rewilding in the city.
Train to Amsterdam. The train was delayed for some reason, we were stuck on the tracks for about an hour.

Included a picture of my tattoo. No, not a real one. It's leftover adhesive from when they bandaged me up after donating blood. I don't know what Hogwarts-style magic they use on their medical tape but the stuff just does not come off. It's on the inside of my arm and everytime I catch sight of it at the edge of my vision my brain registers it as a tattoo. Buckie says it will come off if I use an alcohol based solvent, but I'm pretty sure there is a magical component so I'll just let it fade with time.

Arrived in Amsterdam. The whole city smells of pot smoke. I'm not even kidding. Is everyone here high all the time? How does any work get done?

Hotels in Amsterdam city centre were very expensive. But found one just 15 minutes down the metro that was substantially cheaper. The clerk said he had just dropped the price. It is also called the Hotel... Isis..... which may lead to some spicy interactions if border security ever does a search of my devices. I can imagine them asking "Who did you stay with while you were in Europe?"

Amsterdam is a city of canals, so we decided to take a cruise. Very beautiful old buildings and art. Plugged in to listen to the audio tour. Apparently back in the day there was a tax based on the size of the facade of your house, this resulted in people trying to minimise the front of their house as much as possible. Today the effect of this can be seen as the city consists of long rows of narrow house fronts all squished up together, which gives the city it's now iconic look.

The audio then said that the people, in response to this tax, kept the facade as narrow as possible while expanding the width of the houses at the back. This immediately caused Buckie and I to give each other a sharp look.... like, the physics of that works..... how exactly? Proceeded to joke about the Dutch having discovered non-Euclidean geometry in 1300 AD and have been using it to circumvent city ordinances ever since.

The cruise also took us past a great many house boats. A lot of these houses are built upon floating concrete platforms. This is a leftover from the days of do-whatever-you-want, and people simply built them then maneuvered them down the canals to wherever they wanted to live in the city. As time went on more and more of these things were built and the whole thing started to get a little bit silly, so the city registered each existing one and has since refused to grant licences for new ones. So all there is now is all there will ever be.

In addition to the canals, Amsterdam is also a city of bikes. Huge amounts of them. Great to see. Also a lot of Teslas in the streets. Occasionally we also encountered comically small cars, I've included a picture of one.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Sonoveld's. As we queued up another customer exited the building and, without prompting, immediately began to rave about the quality of the food, praising it enormously. He went on and on about this for a while.

Once he'd left I joked that it was nice to have met the owner.

We had a starter of bread with dips. The two dips at either end were really, really good, the middle one so-so. Buckie ordered a sausage/mash combo and I ordered ribs. Both dishes were amazing. Honestly some of the tastiest food I've ever eaten. The place is also very cramped inside, they have put in as many tables and chairs as possible and it was packed with customers. Fortunately it was not too loud inside.

Took a picture of a sign that is funny in English, I assume it is telling people not to drive on the shoulders of the road and they felt they needed to add a term to stress the importance of this. It was underneath this sign I got my first (of many) offer of drugs for the evening. So the sign is doubly memorable.

We then spent some somber time at Anne Frank's house. I've never done a deep dive into her story but some of her diary was on display, and honestly it was very moving and heart breaking.

The next thing we did was visit Amsterdam's red light district. Much discussion/mirth as to how this segue from Anne Frank's house would appear to readers of my blog. I can't figure out a way to present this chain of events, other than to say that these two links were unrelated. Look, it's not like.... ehh, I'm not going to explain it.

Only one picture of the red light district. There are understandably restrictions on photography there.

Many mundane businesses there have simply added the prefix 'Red Light' to their name, as well some.... red lighting. You have Red Light Bakeries, Red Light Tourist Trinkets, Red Light Mini Marts, Red Light Cafes, etc, etc, etc.

But the main draw, obviously, are the girls. The area had many glass doors framed with red behind which girls in scanty clothes seeking to entice passerbys inside. Much loudly tapping on glass and posing for whomever makes eye-contact. Occasionally one of them will open the door slightly to offer services. It's honestly kind of surreal, the girls are wearing inch thick makeup and the posing behind glass panels in lingerie gives the whole thing a department store maniaquin aesthetic. If you have seen Blade Runner, it has that vibe.

We were also there on a slow night, so perhaps 1/5 of the doors were occupied. I assume the whole staying behind the door thing is a way around a law prohibiting solicitation on the street?

The demographics of the area was not quite what we had expected. There are many old people wandering around, as well as parents with their teenage kids. Relatively high police presence but nowhere near that place I stayed in London. Many, many people on the street hawking drugs.Read more