City Hopping: Amsterdam

19th-22nd July

Reunited once more

I had already had a reunion with Daimi in Berlin but she was back home in Amsterdam so we thought we'd meet again whilst we were visiting. This was the fourth country we had been in together after Thailand, Laos and more recently in Germany. The day we arrived she took us to a local takeaway place that was full of local treats. I had some sort of battered cheese sausage. It was rather nice.

We had spent a night and half a day to get to Amsterdam so we weren't too keen on doing too much exploring straight away. We were staying in a hotel outside of the city as it was cheaper than any of the hostels that were available in the centre. We hung out at the hotel for the afternoon recuperating after an EPIC birthday weekend. It had a pool so I went for a bit of a swim too.

Fancy train station

The next morning, fully refreshed, we took on Amsterdam. Daimi was busy working so she couldn't be our tour guide.

Just a small bike rack

We found it was quite a difficult place to wander around. There's a lot of things to be looking out for in Amsterdam. First of all it was quite busy with people and there is a bike mad culture so there's a lot of things to dodge, that's before looking out for cars but the worst were the trams that seem to come out of nowhere!

Famous canals

Its better to be away from the centre and that's where the local charm of the place comes out with all the canals, narrow streets and buildings that look like they might fall in on you at any moment.

Leaning tower of McDonalds

Dead person

There's a lot of interesting and random museums in Amsterdam. One such place, the Happiness Project, turned out to be a highlight. Once you move past the grim real dead bodies on display it becomes a fascinating place.

He lost his skin

The first part of the exhibition shows how the human body is put together. It was very interesting to look at real organs rather than a picture or plastic model. Some of the displays were really cool like the blood vessel one. I don't know how they managed to put it together but it was all real.

Blood vessels

Big lungs

Dave making himself happy

The second part of the exhibition was about how to make yourself happy. It started with the obvious, exercise releases endorphins etc. Look at how much I'm smiling while I'm swinging away!

Making myself happy

Interesting fact

Then it became even more interesting. The was a sign saying people who give more are happier. That makes sense but then there was another study about choice. You'd think the more choices you have the better but that's not the case. This study showed that having no choice is stressful but also having too much choice can also be stressful.

I want to eat all of them

Another thing I found quite surprising was having kids does not make you happy. Its obviously stressful to have kids but I thought overall it would make you happier, apparently not.

Stressful times

No trip to Amsterdam would be complete with a trip to a local Cafe to try some of the local delicacies. This we did before heading towards the sex museum. This was...interesting. Who knew the Egyptians were such dirty bastards!

Fancy building

More leaning buildings

The next day we continued to wander around the city with no real purpose. We thought we'd leave the red light district until later as we had heard early evening is the best time to visit.

Wandering

The famous sign

We went to the iconic sign which is on the edge of a park. We hung around there for a while as it was such a nice day and the park was full of activity.

Sitting in the sun

Sign Selfie

We met up with Daimi that night and went out for dinner. By the time we had eaten we didn't want to go all the way across the city to see the Red Light District to come all the way back for drinks so we didn't bother. Its a shame we missed it as it would have been fun. But we were drunk and didn't care too much.

Smile?

Big rave!

We had a lot of Jager shots in the bar. Daimi and I reminisced about Asia again and speculated which country we might next see each other in. We ended up in a big nightclub with some randoms. It was a really good night. It was to be our last big night out in Europe as we only a couple more places to visit.

Raving with randoms

It had been another successful reunion and it wasn't the last on this victory lap of Europe. There was to be one more reunion in our next destination, Belgium.