“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape out like the squirrel in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves, cool undying life will rush in.” D.H. Lawrence
So, due to events of less than poor internet connections, time complications and being busy doing awesome and baller shit, we have fallen behind on some of the posts…. So the next few post might be condensed or distilled down into the highlights so as to catch up. Don’t fear dear friends as now that we arrived in Amsterdam and we no longer were on the viking cruise, we were left to fend for ourselves. This fact along with the important reality slowing sinking into our bones, muscles, rattled and deteriorated mentality from lack of sleep meant that we also started to slow down a bit. Having to walk everywhere no longer being chauffeured by bus and boat meant that we did slightly less but even more it meant that the things we were doing now were taking more out of us to accomplish. So where to start then? Well, we shall start at the beginning and end at the end! The best way to get to know a city is to walk it, so we walked it! We started our time in Amsterdam with two walking tours, one in the morning covering important sights, some churches and notable neighborhoods as well interesting historical areas with colorful history. We saw one of the only two wooden structures left in Amsterdam, a hidden church, and a beautiful hidden courtyard where only women who are not married, as the guide worded it, spinsters, are allow to rent but with how pretty the place was, makes me want to be a spinster. We started the walking tour by the main area where everyone was busy walking in circles jumping in front of cars and bikes being stupid, the area with the docks and train station and we ended the tour some three and a half hours later up the street from the house Ann Frank and her family used to hide from the nazis. We saw the church and the bells she heard and wrote about in her diary. I’ll post out one thing about taking photos… The world has changed, we now all have the ability to take photos from our phones! Photos that cost nothing and don’t take an hour to develop or need chemicals. Photos that you can take and instantly see, what I’m driving at here is when you can take a photo and instantly see it, you should be able to see if it is good or bad and in this case when I say good or bad I mean tasteful. Taking selfies of you in front of the Ann Frank house with a shit grin on your face is tasteless. Please take a moment to realize what this place is and why it still stands and what its remembered for. Or ball up and double down on being classless.
The afternoon passed quickly through the aid of naps. The curtain of night fell and we slipped around its velvety bellows to again meet up with our guide to go on the evenings walking tour of the red light district. Ladies of the night “dressed” up and presented themselves as meat hanging in a window curves detailed in glowing dim red lights. It was like a sticky, smelly, acid trip gone of the rails a cheap rip off of Disneys It’s a Small World as we passed windows of women from around the world bardering in the windows with men I remember from my childhood, seen in americas most wanted or to catch a predator with Chris Hanson. Small alleyways with tilted buildings leaning in touching at the top from century old foundations giving way to time rowed at the bottom with windows in front of curtains. Red curtains akin to those that pull back before a show drawn back concealing one, a small overly used bed and sink that has seen unspeakable things…. all tools of the the worlds oldest profession a show seen by those willing to pay. No matter where in the world or throughout time, no matter the state of things or the value of what ever currency reigns supreme this trade job will always be active, a lady turning tricks and a John supplementing her endeavors will be eternally active it seems but the methods in which it takes place in Amsterdam is something else entirely. Our tour ended in the red light district museum of prostitution which was less museum and more a book report of flash cards giving tidbits about prostitution in the area. Its main goal, as to be expected in a city where prostitution is legal, was to make the attendee view prostitution as less an act of selling sex and more a Tuesday night.
Well past the witching hour we ventured out into the city on the hunt for foods! We found this amazing little place called “Walk to Wok” it was like a chipotle but with asian food. You picked the type of noodles you wanted then the meats, toppings and sauces. This place was amazing! Two people stood in the front window and cooked everything to order, when we got there a line down the street was already in place and we joined the hungry waiting others. We got the food to go and went back to the hotel room and had a midnight hotel bed picnic of noodles and I had a space brownie for dessert. The next morning we slept, kept sleeping, woke up, and went back to sleep. We spent the better part of the day vegging doing some laundry in the sink sleeping some more and standing in a blistering hot shower to quell the screaming of our muscles. Later in the day we walked the city for a bit grabbing some pizza and pastry items including some of the famous dutch waffles with the crystal sugar inside before venturing the walk of near two miles to the dock areas where we would go on a pizza cruise through the canals! Yah, pizza twice in a day, we are adults we will do what we want. We boarded the little canal ship and found we had a table to ourselves! The cruise came with pizza and all the drinks you could manage down, beer, soda, water whatever you wanted. I had a few beers and switched to soda unlike the rest of our boat determine to drink all the beer aboard, rowdy would be a polite way to describe it. The captain, the fresh water sea dog he was, fit right in with our motley group. Pulling out of our dock slip he crashed into the dock behind us, yah thats how we started the cruise. Alex immediately swelled with worry, remembering that I have had the pleasure of playing aqua man on three separate occasions riding the bow of a ship beneath the waves, feared this would be tally four as we could see this ship sink as did the others…. well it didn’t. It was a sturdy ship as our captain hit many more things along our cruise through the canals and not a drop of water made it aboard. You can see in some of the photos that are with the red light, we were going under bridges hitting the sides, it was the the Willy Wonka boat ride without the candy. The cruise was fun and defiantly a different way of seeing the city but when one goes on a pizza cruise and orders the meat pizza, let me ask you would you upon receiving said pizza be surprised to see the pizza cover with more mushrooms and onion than meat? Well we sure as shit were. Scrapping off the mushroom and onion from our pizza mounded up filled half the plate. There was more of it than there was pizza! I wish this was exaggeration.
On the last day in Amsterdam it became clear we over booked, eager for the day and running out of time as we still had tickets to four other things, still we were determined to try and see them all done! Starting the morning with the Heineken beer tour was probably not the best start for a proactive day but it is what we did. Walking again miles away, sooooo much walking now we were off the cruise, we went over bridge after bridge till we arrived at a bigger building than I was expecting. The tour was fun, the best way to describe it would be; if you had an interest in trying to live an hour of your life like a beer commercial go here. They had a room with shaking and vibrating floors where the walls were screens to immerse you, games, several interactive bits, free mini beers half way through, a little museum in the beginning, cool immersive rooms with LED tv screen walls that took you on a ride of being bottled and popped! All leading to in a bar in the basement with free beers at the end. So in the end even if it was bad you get swayed or tipsy enough to overlook any shortcomings. From here we were suppose to go to the museum next door with renaissance paintings but now beer filled we opted for the Amsterdam dungeon. A haunted house highlighting dark and seedier aspects of the past. We headed back over the many bridges quickly regretting every decision we had ever made in our silly little lives but many tens of minutes later and a mile or so to the main square near an old place we arrived. Upon entrance we were placed in a cage with other ill fated travelers in a incredibly dark area; literally this whole place was so crazy dark. After some time an evil wench with black teeth lead us away where she separated the men from the women into evil lifts of torment some would call elevators. While my dumb ass thought we were heading down we were actually heading up as I would later discover through our dissent after each room leading back to the ground floor. Our separation was short as we were all reunited at the top. We were lead through the rooms and shown the horrors! Human dissections and the sale of bodies, a trade common at a time in the area. Enlightened to the trickery how some would be forced into labor on ships, shanghaied in the purest sense if you will. We also were shown the accusation, trial, and burning of witches, a role Alex was chosen to play to which she received a certificate as an official witch of Amsterdam. This tour as well ended in a bar with more free beer! It was here I watched two others in the group from the Ukraine, a couple, engage in crude behavior. I watched this skinny skank full on hold the dudes penis. Like just hold it, little bit of stroking but more just holding it like you would hold a sandwich deciding if you were full or not. As though you are interested in it but past the excitement. It was gross, they didn’t care, apparently no one else did ether or they just didn’t care to notice. It was at this moment that I realized these rooms were not dark enough as they had failed to hide the most horrifying thing in this house of torment, the boney hand of a skanky woman hold the uncircumcised floppy elephant nose of a bald argy looking fellow.
Time ticking we were off and headed to the next location, the Van Gogh museum. It was again back to the previous location over bridges and a long walk away, we had not planned this day well for walking. The museum was behind another, surrounding a large park area that was filled with people enjoying the weather. These tickets were timed and so we arrived approximately 30 min early and were directed in without them even bothering to look at the time. A frustrating fact as we were planning events due to the timing of tickets. The Van Gogh museum was interesting for sure, but not what I expected at all. While I am happy to have seen many of his works in which I was unfamiliar and one in particular that I am a new fan of, the lay out for the museum left much to be desired. For sure a promenade artist in todays eye and a museum founded by the nephew of the artist very little thought went into the layout and thought of how the art is presented and displayed to the viewer. Even this being the case we spent the remainder of the day here and left at the museums closing. We heading back to the hotel to shower and pack, relax and prepare for our travel to Paris the following day, travel we would face alone, together!
Erroll & Alex's European Honeymoon Trip! 