A few days ago our group came to Amsterdam. It’s a very… interesting… city to say that least. Our tour guide is really amazing, and he’s so knowledgeable about everything we pass by… We’ll just be driving down the road, and he’ll be like oh if you look to your right you’ll see this historically significant place, and then if you turn to your left you’ll see… On our way to Amsterdam we passed a place call Dancook (or at least that’s how the name sounded!) and he talked about how it was a place where a battle took place during WWII. The Germans did a blitz type of attack, and the soldiers had to fall back quickly. If big ships came into the harbor to pick them up they would have been bombed so the local fisherman, and people that had boats picked up the soldiers and ferried them across to England. Every year there is now a small boat festival to commemorate this, and I guess some of the original boats that helped the soldiers still come to the festival and get places of honor. Also he mentioned the saying tutaloo came from WWI. The Allied soldiers didn’t speak the same languages as each other. Some spoke English and some spoke French… when they were passing each other going to and from battle they would wave to each other and wish each other luck. Instead of saying “goodbye” which seemed negative they would say “See you later” The French version of this phrase is “a tutatedur” eventually it caught on and the English speaking soldiers would greet the French soldiers by saying a tutatedur. When they got home they took this phrase with them, but many of the people in the home countries couldn’t pronounce it correctly… and after a few years it simply because tutaloo! But yes, he knows all kinds of fascinating stories like this, and he’s an excellent tour guide. His name is Earl by the way. It was funny when he introduced himself… he was like you might think this is a joke, but my name is Earl. I think I was the only one that got it haha.
As we continued down the canal we saw all kinds of boats on it, and our tour guide told us that they were boat houses. I took a couple pictures of them… apparently the spot in canal for one of these boats costs 400,000 Euro!!! And that is not even including the annual taxes or the boat itself!! But I guess they are extremely popular and sought after in Amsterdam, because it gets you away from having noisy neighbors above you, and people like the seclusion of it. I imagine it’s probably a status symbol as well… some of the boats are extremely nice looking with stained glass windows and a concrete base, but then other ones are really rusty, and ancient looking… 
Another highlight of our tour was going past the house Anne Frank and her family stayed in while they were hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Anyways! The first thing that we noticed is that there are bikes EVERYWHERE in Amsterdam!
This was a sign in a bike parking garage!
Here is the parking garage itself!
Apparently, there are 750,000 people that live in Amsterdam and there are over a million bikes! Everywhere you look are bikes!! I saw a mother with a covered crib attached to her bike. Apparently over 70,000 bikes are stolen every year, but my tour guide said that if your bike got stolen all you had to do was go down to the flea market later on in the day and you could probably buy it back. They say that sometimes people just grab a random bike and start riding it…. If you look at the pictures you can tell how impossible it would be to ever find your own bike. 
Bikes have their own special lanes and traffic signals too!!
Bikes have their own special lanes and traffic signals too!!You have to be VERY careful about these bike lanes too. They are right next to the sidewalk, and they are quite dangerous if you’re not used to them. Our tour guide told us to make sure we didn’t stand in them… but we stopped to take pictures earlier today, and one of the older women (probably 60 or 70) stood in the bike lane to take a picture, and a biker ran her straight over. She crashed down really hard onto the ground. The guy felt really bad, but she was pretty shaken up about it. So you have to be really careful… when they say watch out for the bike lane… they mean WATCH OUT for the bike lane! But I was overwhelmed with how many bikes were around everywhere! I took a ton of pictures of them because it was so extraordinary.
Also another little tidbit that we learned today is that 1/5 of Holland also known as the Nederlands was reclaimed by people. It used to be under water, but they dug dikes and made canals all throughout the country using wind mills like the one shown above. We had a local tour guide today as well on a our canal boat cruise (which I’ll talk about in a minute) and she said that God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. So it’s very nice… most of it is farmland.
The first thing that we did today was come into Amsterdam and go on a canal boat cruise… which was very nice. We went around Amsterdam with a local tour guide like I said before, and she pointed some things out to us. We went by the Amsterdam Hard Rock Café, which made me excited because I got to snap a picture of it real quick!! There is also one in the city I am staying at right now in Germany, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to venture out and find it tonight… I’ll explain why later on… Also another little tidbit that we learned today is that 1/5 of Holland also known as the Nederlands was reclaimed by people. It used to be under water, but they dug dikes and made canals all throughout the country using wind mills like the one shown above. We had a local tour guide today as well on a our canal boat cruise (which I’ll talk about in a minute) and she said that God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. So it’s very nice… most of it is farmland.
As we continued down the canal we saw all kinds of boats on it, and our tour guide told us that they were boat houses. I took a couple pictures of them… apparently the spot in canal for one of these boats costs 400,000 Euro!!! And that is not even including the annual taxes or the boat itself!! But I guess they are extremely popular and sought after in Amsterdam, because it gets you away from having noisy neighbors above you, and people like the seclusion of it. I imagine it’s probably a status symbol as well… some of the boats are extremely nice looking with stained glass windows and a concrete base, but then other ones are really rusty, and ancient looking…
Another highlight of our tour was going past the house Anne Frank and her family stayed in while they were hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Anne Frank’s diary is the second most highly published book in the world… the only book that beats it out is the bible.
Also if you look along the canal you can see that cars have to park dangerously close to the canal, and apparently sometimes they fall in!!
Also if you look along the canal you can see that cars have to park dangerously close to the canal, and apparently sometimes they fall in!!
Yep that's right there are no railings along parts of the canal and you have to parrell park!!!!
Our canal tour guide told us that if that was to happen that you call the fire brigade and you stay in the car until they get there. If you get out of the car and leave it in the canal it is no longer considered an emergency, and apparently they charge you a fortune to get it out! So she said just stay in until they get there!
Also as you go down the canal you can see houses that are really beautifully decorated. Back in the day houses didn’t have numbers on them. So to distinguish them from each other people decorated the to with their coat of arms, or other decorations. I took a few pictures them…
Now… as you’re going through Amsterdam you see XXX EVERYWHERE! And when I say everywhere… I’m not talking about the red light district (we’ll get to that) but I truly mean everywhere. It’s on churches, it’s on flags, it’s on the ground… everywhere you look it’s there. Apparently, they say that the XXX stands for the three major tragedies that have stricken Amsterdam… the fire, the flood, and the plague. And at first I was really really touched by how much the city remembered and respected the people that suffered during these times. Because when you walk past the even the gift shops it has XXX everywhere… if you look at some of the bike pictures you can see that XXX is used interchangeably with the name Amsterdam.
So yes, I was very touched by it and thought it was so lovely… then I walked into the red light district, and I realized that I was a bit naïve!! I started to think that maybe XXX standing for Amsterdam might mean a different thing completely!!! You wouldn’t believe some of the shops and some of the things that we saw!!! I couldn’t believe it all… and we didn’t even walk by the prostitute section… we saw the sex shop section and that was quite enough for us. I really don’t know if I should even post some of the pictures I took on my blog, because they were really bad!!! But I felt like I was in Amsterdam, and I couldn’t really leave without at least walking into the red light district once. But even at the one restaurant we walked past you could tell that “ladies of the night” worked there… because they were wearing REALLY… EXTREMELY short skirts… like I don’t even know why they bothered to tell you the truth. And the one girl was wearing a shirt saying something along the lines of “I’m 21 want to bang my box?” My friend and I were like woaaaahhh to say the least!
Let’s see what other little tidbits can I tell you about Amsterdam?? Well for one it’s pretty expensive… so there won’t be any postcards from Amsterdam. I’m sure I’ll find a much nicer place to send them from! The national color of Amsterdam and I believe Holland in general is orange. On the Queen’s Day which in April they all come out and have giant parties in the street and everyone wears orange. Funny story the actual Queen… Queen Beatrice’s birthday is actually in December when she became Queen the people decided that it would be too cold to run about and throw parties in the street during the winter so they kept the Queen’s day to the previous queens… or the current queens mother’s birthday… if that makes sense. But I guess the people in Amsterdam really love the royal family. When I was walking around in the shops I saw all kinds of postcards with pictures of the royal family on them. The future king has three adorable little girls and there were quite a few pictures of them all around. Also even though Amsterdam is the capital of Holland the Queen and the parliament does not operate from there. They actually operate from a different city that I can’t spell! Haha. However, there is a bank in Amsterdam with the countries gold supply in it. Remember how I told you that the city was reclaimed from being underwater? Well part of the bank is actually under the water, and if any thief tries to break into the bank they open a latch, lock down the lower part of the building, and let the water in… drowning the thief before they can get out with the gold! Talk about “Thief be warned if you seek a treasure that isn’t yours” that is from Harry Potter for those that don’t know. It’s the warning on the Wizarding Bank. I wonder if J. K. Rowling has ever seen this bank in Amsterdam??
But so far I am liking my tour a lot!! The beds have been sooo much more comfortable than what I’m used to! It has been very nice to sleep in nice comfy room with HEAT! I was so comfortable last night that I didn’t even want to wake up! We had a phone wake up call, and I slept right through it. The woman that I’m staying with woke up me at 7:25 and was like oh hey they are collecting the bags at 7:30 so I had to mad scrabble up and get what I needed out of my suitcase and get it outside in time. The breakfast was really decent, and the frosted flakes that I ate were REALLY delicious. We are staying at a Holiday Inn tonight, and we had a buffet dinner. It didn’t have a TON of food on the buffet, but it was very decent. I was stuffed when I left. They also had all kinds of German desserts which was really interesting and pretty yummy! Also there is a lake behind our hotel with walking/running trails. We got here right before sunset so we got to walk around a bit and it was really pretty, and there is a great view from our room. My only disappointment is the lack of internet. It seems like all throughout the day I see places with free wifi, but then the hotels only have limited access… which seems really strange to me. At the Holiday Inn I am it costs .35 a minute… so that’s a bit too expensive for me… I’ll wait until I have free access to get on. It kind of sucks though, because here I finally have time to go on, but I’m not able to… it’s alright though. I wasn’t really planning on playing Castle Age here too much anyway! I’ll just have to make dad pray to Azeron for me *hint hint* haha. But earlier I was trying to find a McDonalds because I’ve been seeing them all day with free wifi access, and they are open 24 hrs a day usually… so Nyari (the other young girl) and I were walking down the street a little ways, and we ran into a man that is a newlywed on our tour group. Ohh and I forgot to tell you about this our tour guide warned us and gave us some tips about pick pockets in Europe. Apparently, it can be quite bad. He said that if anyone comes up to you and asks you if you can speak English just say “Eh??” because that gives them a reason to get close to you and they have a better probability of distracting you and getting your money. By just saying eh? And making a confused face you throw them off and they’ll probably just move on to someone else… There are several other tricks and techniques as well, but I’ll talk about those later on… Anyways, so we were standing on the corner talking to each other and this guy comes up to us and goes “Ahhh I know an english speaking man when I see one!” and he comes over to us, and all of three of us we like oh crap! We kept trying to get away from him, but he kept talking to us… and he was like oh so where are you girls going? And the guy was like oh they are with me. And the guy was like no they aren’t you’ve probably only just met up with them. And the guy we were with was like no no no for the next three weeks the girls are with me. It was really nice of him. I was very thankful that he claimed us in front of the stranger. Not that the guy would have necessarily done anything, but after seeing all those “ladies of the night” and what not all day long … I was quite happy to get away from him. I actually think that the man had good intentions though, because as we were trying to get away from him his wife and little girl came over… so he was probably harmless but we weren’t sure at the time. It’s just good to know that people on the tour will watch out for us a bit. But after that it was getting dark, and I didn’t want to stray away to try to find a McDonalds somewhere with wifi! So sorry about the lack of posts on here, but hopefully we’ll come into hotels with free wifi soon! I’m writing everything down in a Word document while it’s fresh in my mind right now, and when I get internet I’ll just make multiple posts in my blog!
Overall it’s been great so far!! I’m really happy that I choose to go this route. A lot of the people on the tour are really well traveled and have been to a lot of places… and it’s cool to get to know people from different parts of the world. I’m mostly with Australians and New Zealanders … so it’s nice to get to chat with different people.
Now… as you’re going through Amsterdam you see XXX EVERYWHERE! And when I say everywhere… I’m not talking about the red light district (we’ll get to that) but I truly mean everywhere. It’s on churches, it’s on flags, it’s on the ground… everywhere you look it’s there. Apparently, they say that the XXX stands for the three major tragedies that have stricken Amsterdam… the fire, the flood, and the plague. And at first I was really really touched by how much the city remembered and respected the people that suffered during these times. Because when you walk past the even the gift shops it has XXX everywhere… if you look at some of the bike pictures you can see that XXX is used interchangeably with the name Amsterdam.
So yes, I was very touched by it and thought it was so lovely… then I walked into the red light district, and I realized that I was a bit naïve!! I started to think that maybe XXX standing for Amsterdam might mean a different thing completely!!! You wouldn’t believe some of the shops and some of the things that we saw!!! I couldn’t believe it all… and we didn’t even walk by the prostitute section… we saw the sex shop section and that was quite enough for us. I really don’t know if I should even post some of the pictures I took on my blog, because they were really bad!!! But I felt like I was in Amsterdam, and I couldn’t really leave without at least walking into the red light district once. But even at the one restaurant we walked past you could tell that “ladies of the night” worked there… because they were wearing REALLY… EXTREMELY short skirts… like I don’t even know why they bothered to tell you the truth. And the one girl was wearing a shirt saying something along the lines of “I’m 21 want to bang my box?” My friend and I were like woaaaahhh to say the least!
Let’s see what other little tidbits can I tell you about Amsterdam?? Well for one it’s pretty expensive… so there won’t be any postcards from Amsterdam. I’m sure I’ll find a much nicer place to send them from! The national color of Amsterdam and I believe Holland in general is orange. On the Queen’s Day which in April they all come out and have giant parties in the street and everyone wears orange. Funny story the actual Queen… Queen Beatrice’s birthday is actually in December when she became Queen the people decided that it would be too cold to run about and throw parties in the street during the winter so they kept the Queen’s day to the previous queens… or the current queens mother’s birthday… if that makes sense. But I guess the people in Amsterdam really love the royal family. When I was walking around in the shops I saw all kinds of postcards with pictures of the royal family on them. The future king has three adorable little girls and there were quite a few pictures of them all around. Also even though Amsterdam is the capital of Holland the Queen and the parliament does not operate from there. They actually operate from a different city that I can’t spell! Haha. However, there is a bank in Amsterdam with the countries gold supply in it. Remember how I told you that the city was reclaimed from being underwater? Well part of the bank is actually under the water, and if any thief tries to break into the bank they open a latch, lock down the lower part of the building, and let the water in… drowning the thief before they can get out with the gold! Talk about “Thief be warned if you seek a treasure that isn’t yours” that is from Harry Potter for those that don’t know. It’s the warning on the Wizarding Bank. I wonder if J. K. Rowling has ever seen this bank in Amsterdam??
But so far I am liking my tour a lot!! The beds have been sooo much more comfortable than what I’m used to! It has been very nice to sleep in nice comfy room with HEAT! I was so comfortable last night that I didn’t even want to wake up! We had a phone wake up call, and I slept right through it. The woman that I’m staying with woke up me at 7:25 and was like oh hey they are collecting the bags at 7:30 so I had to mad scrabble up and get what I needed out of my suitcase and get it outside in time. The breakfast was really decent, and the frosted flakes that I ate were REALLY delicious. We are staying at a Holiday Inn tonight, and we had a buffet dinner. It didn’t have a TON of food on the buffet, but it was very decent. I was stuffed when I left. They also had all kinds of German desserts which was really interesting and pretty yummy! Also there is a lake behind our hotel with walking/running trails. We got here right before sunset so we got to walk around a bit and it was really pretty, and there is a great view from our room. My only disappointment is the lack of internet. It seems like all throughout the day I see places with free wifi, but then the hotels only have limited access… which seems really strange to me. At the Holiday Inn I am it costs .35 a minute… so that’s a bit too expensive for me… I’ll wait until I have free access to get on. It kind of sucks though, because here I finally have time to go on, but I’m not able to… it’s alright though. I wasn’t really planning on playing Castle Age here too much anyway! I’ll just have to make dad pray to Azeron for me *hint hint* haha. But earlier I was trying to find a McDonalds because I’ve been seeing them all day with free wifi access, and they are open 24 hrs a day usually… so Nyari (the other young girl) and I were walking down the street a little ways, and we ran into a man that is a newlywed on our tour group. Ohh and I forgot to tell you about this our tour guide warned us and gave us some tips about pick pockets in Europe. Apparently, it can be quite bad. He said that if anyone comes up to you and asks you if you can speak English just say “Eh??” because that gives them a reason to get close to you and they have a better probability of distracting you and getting your money. By just saying eh? And making a confused face you throw them off and they’ll probably just move on to someone else… There are several other tricks and techniques as well, but I’ll talk about those later on… Anyways, so we were standing on the corner talking to each other and this guy comes up to us and goes “Ahhh I know an english speaking man when I see one!” and he comes over to us, and all of three of us we like oh crap! We kept trying to get away from him, but he kept talking to us… and he was like oh so where are you girls going? And the guy was like oh they are with me. And the guy was like no they aren’t you’ve probably only just met up with them. And the guy we were with was like no no no for the next three weeks the girls are with me. It was really nice of him. I was very thankful that he claimed us in front of the stranger. Not that the guy would have necessarily done anything, but after seeing all those “ladies of the night” and what not all day long … I was quite happy to get away from him. I actually think that the man had good intentions though, because as we were trying to get away from him his wife and little girl came over… so he was probably harmless but we weren’t sure at the time. It’s just good to know that people on the tour will watch out for us a bit. But after that it was getting dark, and I didn’t want to stray away to try to find a McDonalds somewhere with wifi! So sorry about the lack of posts on here, but hopefully we’ll come into hotels with free wifi soon! I’m writing everything down in a Word document while it’s fresh in my mind right now, and when I get internet I’ll just make multiple posts in my blog!
Overall it’s been great so far!! I’m really happy that I choose to go this route. A lot of the people on the tour are really well traveled and have been to a lot of places… and it’s cool to get to know people from different parts of the world. I’m mostly with Australians and New Zealanders … so it’s nice to get to chat with different people.
