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| Erin's Journal for 9-14-02 We'd had a somewhat sleepless night, due both to our time adjustment and to the loud and rude campers who'd arrived back from the city around 2am and stayed outside to party and yell and curse and be sick until almost 6am. Our roommates had risen early and left, another wakeful hour for me, so after they were gone at 7:30am, I got my first deep sleep of the night for about 2 hours! I was tired, but revved to go to the city anyway. We used the shower facilities and were pleasantly surprised to have hot water, even though it was only for 5 minutes! The timer would stop the water after that, and keep it off for 5 more minutes to ensure that nobody could 'hog' the hot water! Effective and fair, but still my fastest shower in recent weeks The weather was overcast today, quite a bummer after the gorgeous weather of the day before, but we gamely packed our rain jackets and boarded the local bus for Amsterdam. It took about an hour and dropped us at Central Station, with some great views of the city on the way in. What a pretty place! There are canals throughout, but the streets are still navigable to cars and pedestrians (unlike Venice). The architecture is pretty modern in the center and outskirts where the businesses are, but intermixed in town are the tall rowhouses with their quaint charm and large lovely flats First things first: we needed lunch! So where did we stop? An Italian cafe!!! We shared a good pizza, which fortified us to go on. We walked down the center strip of town to Dam Square, site of the national monument. Then we diverted to go check on one of the local hostels Glenn had looked up before we arrived, in hopes of finding rooms available for the next few days, but they were still booked. This was our deciding factor as to when to leave town - if we could have moved into the city, we'd have stayed 5 days, but the campsite wasn't very convenient, and we knew we'd be coming back here to fly on to Kenya. After that, we headed across town to the Museum District, where the famous Van Gogh museum is, along with several other impressive collections. By the time we arrived at the first one, the Rijksmuseum, we found that it would close in just 90 minutes. Not wanting to waste money where we'd clearly miss so much, we walked through its arched tunnel to the park area beyond to rest for a bit in the intermittent sun. We sat and just relaxed together for almost an hour, then mustered again for a trip to the Anne Frank house We walked a long way again, with a couple of wrong turns, to find the house where Anne and her family hid for 3 years during Nazi occupation. This museum was very well put-together, with excerpts from her journal and pictures of the days of 1942 - 45 on the walls, as well as the tour's path up into the parts of the house that had housed 8 people in hiding for so long. It was amazing and horrifying to think of such an existence, especially since we know they were eventually discovered and sent off to the Nazi camps. The families were separated, and Anne and her sister both died in the work camp where they ended up After this excellent tour, we were ready for dinner. We'd been walking around Amsterdam for almost 8 hours now, and although we were very impressed with it, we were getting ready to call it a day. We found a grocery store nearby, where we picked up a few essentials for breakfast the next day, then agreed upon another Italian restaurant for dinner. This time we weren't so lucky - the food was bland and not worth the high price (Amsterdam is quite expensive!). But we enjoyed the waiter (a Spanish man from Cordoba passing easily for a native Italian in a foreign country After dinner, we headed up toward the bus station, but realized we had almost an hour before the bus came that would take us back to the campsite. So we wandered through the Red Light District, amused at the prostitutes displayed in windowed doorways, most of them looking pretty bored! There were lots of British and Irish guys walking around, and we saw a few deals get made and the guys being invited in to the prostitute's apartment (they drew the curtains though!). We also noticed a large number of Japanese men in lines for the live sex shows! We wandered around for almost 35 minutes, then left for the bus station We got home and instantly crashed (still jetlagged, remember?). The only problem: the guys who'd come home at 2am the night before had seemingly decided to just party at the campsite all night this time! They were right outside our tent laughing, yelling, cursing, etc.! From the time we got back until about 5:30 in the morning, they carried on, and we slept very little. We decided right then to check out the very next morning and head for Berlin. |
| Horses grazed in this field alongside the bus stop into Amsterdam |