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Despite the changing hassle and early start, the flight itself was nice and really quite short, we seemed to start descending almost as soon as we reached height. After checking in at about 11 to Flying Pig Downtown hostel we locked our bags in our (massive, about 40 people?) dorm and chatted to an American guy in our room called Radio. We then headed out to explore Amsterdam by bike and hired bikes with classic Amsterdam 'pedal brakes'. As we discovered after about half an hour of experimenting, these were bikes with no brakes and no gears, but if you pedalled backwards a little it suddenly braked a lot and you almost fell off. The front wheels were also not very tight and so of you gave someone's front wheel a kick it hit off sideways and misaligned with the handlebars, and of course the bikes did not come with helmets. After cycling around aimlessly for a while, we decided to head out to the Vondelpark, which a reasonably small but quite nice landscaped park just outside Central Amsterdam (reminds me of battersea park) and we picked up a toastie here for lunch. We then cycled over to the Albert Cuyp market, a market with a mishmash of styles and no particular theme (unlike London markets, eg borough is food), and here you could find souvenir stalls next to a fishmonger next to a flower stall etc. I bought some orange juice and will and james shared a waffle before heading to the sex museum, which was mostly absolutely hilarious, but a little weird at times. There's a very noticeable theme around Amsterdam that almost everything you see is geared towards either sex or weed, with coffeeshops everywhere. We then locked our bikes up at an enormous bike stand (3 storeys) outside Amsterdam Centraal and headed back to the hostel to relax. As the other two fell asleep I headed to the bar and met an Israeli guy called Amir (although I guessed his nationality completely wrong, going American Canadian Australian before he told me), the blonde bargirl Claire and an American called Simon. We then headed to the supermarket to get some food, which we cooked and ate at the hostel. We then headed out to a coffeeshop, cafe baba before opting to simply wander around the red light district simply to see what it's like. I have to admit, it's definitely an experience. The prostitutes literally stand in the windows illuminated by red lights beckoning you in (hence the name) and you can tell the successful ones as they simply close their curtains. We then headed back to the hostel and headed towards bed. We woke up at 10, and then realised we had an hour to return the bikes, pack and check out of the hostel. Somehow, we managed this and then piggybacked off the hostels free wifi to book our train for Berlin. Our train wasn't until half 3 so we locked our bags in lockers at the station and went to find the I Amsterdam sign, which we discovered outside the Rijks museum, and we experienced the trams which we had spent so much of our time avoiding. It was then almost time for our train, so we headed over to the station.
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