Amsterdam Nov 11-12, part 1

This trip was interesting to say the least!!! SOoooooo many different adventures and it was so much fun. Angela and I left for our Amsterdam adventure at 9pm Friday night after school. We took an overnight coach so we had to get on the ferry from Dover, UK to Calais, France. The ferry ride is 1 1/2 hours so it is not too bad but getting there we were both so tired and I slept the whole way across the English Channel.


Angela seemed to have a little more energy than I did at the moment so she took some pictures of what was going on. Little did you know, she too feel asleep a few moments after I did. I woke up when we were docking and got Ang up so we could go back to the coach and get on the bus for another few hours. Back on the coach the bus driver asked me a question, he asked if I had any other luggage (other than my backpack) and I answered No. Which is not weird at all. Well Angela, and the man behind me both looked bewildered. I guess the bus driver had spoken Dutch to me and I answered his question. I found that cool that I understood what he was asking me, even though I don't speak Dutch...maybe I should learn that language next!?

The bus was supposed to arrive in Amsterdam at 8:30am, which would have been wonderful except that it arrived at 6:30am!?!? What were we supposed to do so early. We had hoped to get a little more sleep on the bus but that didn't happen. We went into the bus station where they had the most UNCOMFOTABLE benches in the world. I luckily did get back to sleep crunched into a little ball on one of the benches until a man came over and lifted my scarf off my face to ask if I was going to Barcelona. What?? Then I had to go to the washroom (which you have to pay for!!!) and I asked Angela to watch my stuff...DO NOT FREAK OUT BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS OK!!! When I was in the washroom, a man walked by and Ang saw him take something out of my bag...it was my wallet...which had EVERYTHING in it. She went after him and he threw it back at her...I HAVE ALL MY STUFF...but it was the scariest thing in the world...I was not impressed. But that is over now and I am never NEVER going to have someone else watch my stuff again.

NOW...at about 8:30am Ang and I decided to take a metro into the city, since the bus station is on the outskirts. We arrived at the Centraal Station, which is HUGE and gorgeous!!! (see below). We bought this special card to take the metro and trams and trains...but we had no idea how to use it, so we ended up not getting to card stamped to the city. Not that bad, we didn't get caught and we saved some money!!! Good times! We walked down the street opposite the centraal station which had a lot of tourist shops and bus/boat tour operators. We signed up for a bus tour which started at 10am so we had some time to kill. We were both really hungry so we went to find somewhere to eat and then did some shopping.

During the time before the tour we walked down a lot of side streets and around the main part of Amsterdam and we came across many of these contraptions.

Do you know what they are??? They are "toilets"...weird. They are in place for men so they don't pee anywhere. It's so strange but the strangest part is that men use them ALL the time. We even saw two men chatting and using them at the same time. Different culture. I guess it is good in a sense that they are not going all over the street.

Our bus tour started beside this canal. Amsterdam is gorgeous and has various canals around it. Before beginning the bus tour the woman giving the tour asked a question to everyone on the bus. The same thing happened that happened on the coach. I answered another question which was asked in Dutch...I really think I should learn the language seeing as I can understand some of it anyways.