Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
After our car transfer at 4:30am, our flight to Amsterdam, then another local train to Amsterdam central, we finally arrived at our hotel 'Doubletree Hilton' at about 10am. It was an extremely nice hotel, we even got a warm chocolate "welcome" cookie each haha never had that before from a hotel on check in. Quick bite to eat, checked out the hotel room then onto an Amsterdam 90 minute river cruise to get an overview of the city. It was nice, Amsterdam is not known for its monuments or buildings and it is rather flat with not many high rises. It has canals with houseboats everywhere and bicycles as far the eye can see, they reckon approx. 450,000 in the city alone and finding a parking space for your bike is also almost impossible! Back to the hotel where I had a nap and rested whilst Matty went out to a coffee shop and well...you can guess the rest of his little trip to the coffee shop. Later that evening at 7pm we did a Red Light District 2hr tour which was extremely informative and eye opening... it's very, very safe with cameras and police everywhere. It had an interesting atmosphere, kind of like when you are grocery shopping. Everyone goes about their business, looking around, eating at fine food restaurants in the district, sex shops and museums galore, peep shops, live shows, a kindygarden, a few churches, gay clubs, walking past almost naked women (and even lady men) in windows looking for your business, and every coffee shop we passed had that awful weed smell lol. We actually thoroughly enjoyed the walking tour, it gave you a real overview by a local (she even lived in the apartment above the most famous sex shop in the city haha) of what the district entailed and how it came about. All I can say is if you ever pass through or go to Amsterdam, do the tour! At 9pm we went back to the Hilton where we sat and had a really nice (expensive) dinner and went to bed.
The next day it was raining so we slept in, took our time at the buffet breakfast and checked out at 12pm. We then spent some time at the Skylounge at our hotel which gave a 360 degree view of Amsterdam city, very nice. We then went to a very large Amsterdam souvenier store and spent some $$$$. This is the first store I've come across that actually had good products to purchase, not cheap junk. We then headed for the train station and awaited our train to Brussels. The train from Amsterdam to Brussels took about 2hrs. We checked into our hotel at about 6pm, had dinner and went to bed. My first impression of Brussels which didn't change was that it reminded me of Naples in Italy - dirty, smelly and lots of homeless people which surprised me. However it seemed that everything outside of Brussels was nice, just the city itself wasn't pleasant.
- comments