Post-Brussels, we arrived in the original city of sin, the scandalous capital of the Netherlands, where they dare not to obsess over moral integrity and dispense with good old conservative values. Well, at least in a few neighborhoods. Amsterdam was amazingly diverse, and as far as I'm concerned, the most interesting bits were a few streets removed from the red lit windows and suspicious smelling smoke. If you can dodge the bikes (and there are MANY of these silent, fast-moving death machines) you can find some picturesque canals, worse-for-wear old houses with high-design interiors, and tiny markets dotted all around.
That said, one cannot visit this city without taking a walk around the Red Light District. Our first venture in this area was in search of Chinese food, of all things. On arrival to our hostel (which I will shortly address) we were given a map and shown a number of important locations in the city. These were all helpfully circled, though not labeled. Thus we were unprepared for the 'food' area to be an offshoot of the 'sex and drugs' area. Possibly not the height of urban planning, unless it's a move of unprecedented consideration. All the sex and drugs might cause one to become peckish, after all.
Now, the hostel. It must be said... the hostel was a boat. The prospect was incredibly exciting, especially given the lyrical genius of the Lonely Island Planet fresh in our minds (apologies to all those to whom this obscure reference makes absolutely no sense. To everyone else... we were on a boat!! The reality was not nearly so exciting as the prospect had been, but it was still a pretty good place to stay. The fact that it was a boat somehow completely excused the fact that the room was like two shoe boxes stacked one atop the other, and having breakfast on a boat felt strangely more relaxing than any other breakfast we'd had up to this point. We attribute much of this to the presence of the ships parrot (well,budgie) who chirped quietly all through the meal.
For one of our days in Amsterdam, I decided to live like a local, and hire a bike. The hunted had become the hunter, as I mounted my silent instrument of doom and prepared to clean up some of my ex-kin, the hapless pedestrians. I ended up using the bike to ride well out of the city centre, on a trip to visit some buildings that you'd no doubt find dreadfully uninteresting to read about. To look at, they were quite fantastic, but I'll gloss over the detail, and move on to my ride back. The ride out had been such a pleasant experience, with the wind at my back I just cruised along effortlessly. Why would anybody ever WALK, I thought, when riding was so blissfully easy and efficient? Well, I found out why, and it's all about wind resistance. On the way back into the city, all that lovely wind which I'd barely noticed was propelling me along was now turned against me, and this was very evident. I'd describe it as trying to jog through treacle, and at many points it seemed more sensible to jump off and push than to try and pedal into this ridiculous gale. If I hadn't been alone, I'd have whinged something shocking, but I was alone, and thus I've caught up on missed whinging here.
No comments:
Post a Comment