Arrived in Amsterdam at around 6:00pm on Thursday night, raining again but truth be told, we've been lucky with the weather as it hasn't affected anything we've wanted to do yet and it's been raining all through Europe during most of our time here, we just seem to miss the bad weather.
Went for a walk to have a look around the city and to find the Van Gogh museum and check opening and closing times etc, we were already booked on another cycle tour around the outskirts of Amsterdam that started at 11:00am, so we wanted to make sure that we could fit the museum in around that tomorrow. Turns out that we shouldn't have been worried, the Van Gogh museum is open until 10:00pm on Fridays, so we had plenty of time to visit after the bike tour. We had some dinner, decided to get Mexican and it was pretty good.
Once we'd managed to get completely lost not far from the Van Gogh museum (I was actually taking us in completely the wrong direction when we asked for directions), we headed back towards the hotel, it was around 10:00pm so we decided to take a walk through the red light district which was not far from where we were staying, on the way there we found an Irish pub, run by a Dutch girl of course, so we sat down for a Heiniken or three. Now that we were suitably liquered up, we wandered into the red light district, found lots of drunk pommy guys, about a 10-1 ratio of guys to girls (no surprises there!!) and everything else you hear about Amsterdams red light district, it was interesting to go for a walk, the whlole concept of the girls standing in the windows like manequins is a bit weird, but we did manage to see one young gent make his choice for the evening and go on inside, much to Carols disgust.
We wandered back to the hotel and went to bed, only to be woken at about 6:30am to the sounds of the workers banging around on the scaffolding that was surrounding our hotel, nice Friday morning alarm clock that one ;-) We still managed to stay in bed until around 7:30 and by the time we got up and moving we didn't leave the hotel until about 10:00. We headed off towards the cycle tour, arrived there at 10:25(too early again!!) but it worked in our favour this time, as one of the girls in the shop did tell us that if we wanted to eat something on the 4 hour cycle tour we should go and grab something, as there wasn't really a lunch stop on the tour. I think they should put this in the write up of the tour, as our Berlin cycle tour took us to the beer garden where you could a least purchase lunch.
Anyway we went off to find the bakery that the girl pointed us at, sat down for a coffee along the way and then bought a couple of baked goods for the cycle tour.
At the begining of the tour I was selected as the "ass man", which makes me the person who has to stay at the back of the group to make sure that no one falls behind, I'm pretty sure that I was selected because I was taller than most and wearing a blue t-shirt that was easily recognisable, making it easy for the tour guide to pick where the back of the group was, anyway I was given a free beer at the cheese "factory/farm" for my troubles and I didn't mind riding along at the back.
The tour was really good, just like the Berlin tour the guide was extremely knowledgeable about the Netherlands and Amsterdam, so we got a really good history lesson on how the Netherlands came to be and why Amsterdam was built where it was, which wasn't really a great place to build a city by the sound of it, given that it was pretty much a smelly swamp! Anyway the building of the city and the infrastructure that they use to keep the place dry is really interesting and well worth hearing about. We also discovered that it was gay pride week in Amsterdam while we were here, and that the main paradce was happening on Saturday afternoon, it was a pity that we were booked on the train from Calais to London on Sat afternoon, as the parade would have been worth hanging around for.
After about 2 hours of riding through the Dutch country side we had our stop at the cheese farm, which was a small family run farm that makes cheese(yeah I know you already got that) and clogs (or wooden shoes as the Dutch call them) it was a short but interesting tour and they had beer for sale (see earlier comment about me getting one for free) and Carol and I were able to eat our baked goods, while about 40 other hungry cyclists drooled. Our guide had actually brought along some raisin buns "just in case anyone was hungry", not surprisingly these dissapeared quite quickly, and no Carol and I didn't take any even though they looked really nice ;-), from the cheese farm (sounds wrong but so does cheese factory) we headed back through the country side and heard a little more about the Netherlands and Amsterdam.
After the tour we headed off for the Van Gogh museum, but along the way we stopped at the "last minute ticket" shop to see iof there were any bargains for shows that night, we picked up tickets for a comedy show, more on that later. The Van Gogh museum was amazing, even for a hethen such as myself, you still have to admire the art work in there and the people who were painting it, quite an amazing collection of art and a really good way to get an understanding of not only Van Gogh but also the way art was changing during the era he lived in, like I say, fascinating, even for me!
We spent a good two and a half hours in the museum and then headed off for the comedy show. It was a cabaret style show so we were able to get there early and have dinner at our seats(table) and as seats weren't allocated getting there early for dinner meant that you got to pick where you sat which was good. We had a reasonable meal, not the best meal we've had while on holidays, but not the worst either and waited for the show to start.
It turned out to be an American comedy act called "Boom Chicago", which was a little dissapointing when we first heard that as we we're attempting to see a local show. We needn't have been dissapointed as the show was actually local, although the entire cast was American, they've been hosting shows in Amsterdam for a number of years and are part of the scenery there, so local I guess is what you make of it. The show was excellent, it was a mix of pre-rehearsed skits, which were very good, and improv which in general was even better, we really enjoyed the show and I'd recommend a visit to it if you're ever in Amsterdam with an evening to spare.
So that was our Amsterdam experience, we had a good time and may go back to spend more time in some of the other museums if the opportunity arises.
Pictures from our time in Amsterdam
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