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Amsterdam
December 2003 - January 2004
| Day 1 Arrival |
Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 New Year's Eve |
Day 5 New Year's Day |
Day 6 | Day 7 & Departure |
Day 3
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We got up at a reasonable hour and noticed even more crowds rolling into town. Centraal Station was like an ant hill with armies of people pouring out of it. |
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SW and I wandered into the Church of St. Nicholas, just across from Centraal Station, a comparatively new church with plenty to look at. |
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There's a ship hanging above the door, a blessing for the sailors that made Holland a worldwide power a couple hundred years ago. |
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It's free, and worth the visit if you're in the neighborhood. |
| We had lunch at an Indonesian restaurant and had some tasty food, like this chicken noodle dish with some kind of rice cake things that tasted like a cross between pork rinds and styrofoam. The noodles were tasty. |
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| I had spicy green beans and some kind of broiled chicken with rice and some strange granola-like topping. |
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| LH got the chicken satay, basically chicken kebobs with some kind of peanutty sauce. |
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Somebody's bikes went home, seatless, with someone else. |
| We caught a tram across town to see the Rijksmuseum, a massive national museum halfway across town. We managed to find the place, only to discover the line was an hour long. By the time we’d have gotten in it wouldn’t have left us much time to see anything, so we walked around in search of an office where we could get advance tickets for later in the week. Behind the museum is a huge park complete with a skating rink. It was a scene straight out of a Dutch painting. Only the nylon winter jackets in bright colors looked out of place. |  |
It turns out you can buy advance tickets for the museum, but you still have to stand in the damn line, and even with advance tickets you're not guaranteed entry. Seems pointless to me. So we headed next door to the Van Gogh museum instead. The line was short and moving quickly so we got in before we froze to death. Unfortunately, the Christmas through New Year season is Amsterdam’s busiest time of year so the museum was packed, leaving little room or time to consider any of the works. But I still enjoyed seeing it again.
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We passed through Dam square several times. Crews were busily setting up a stage, a light show, cranes, etc. They were testing the light show while we walked by, projecting various patterns of light on the old palace, used as a backdrop for the stage. Pretty nifty stuff. |
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Near Dam square is a tasty little pastry shop where several of us loaded up on sweets. Mmmmm! |
We hooked up with some of the gang and had dinner at the same restaurant where
we’d had our first meal in town. I opted for the spare ribs, a popular dish in
Holland. Pretty good stuff.
We returned to the Smoking Bull for a beer and a bowl, or two, or three…
We considered hitting a live sex show, but decided it probably wasn’t worth it
as jetlagged and stoned as we were, so we stalled on that and called it an early
night. But as I lay in bed listening to SW snore and the churchbells ring off
every 15 minutes, I heard fellow degenerates tromping down the stairs outside. I
poked my head out to confirm some were headed back out again so I reassembled
the cold weather gear, hitched the dogs to the sled and headed out with them.
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We hit Last Watering Hole, a bar/coffeeshop around the corner from our hotel where degenerates DC & BC had been earlier watching live music. |
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We arrived to catch somebodyorother’s Jam Session, featuring an ever-rotating lineup of guys cranking out cover tunes of classic rock and blues, interspersed with random moments of African music courtesy of Mamu from Senegal on lead vocals. Last Watering Hole attracts an international crowd, some locals, some tourists, all bopping along to the beat of music actually created by the hands of man. After a couple of days of “THUMP tshhh THUMP tshhh THUMP tshhh”, even an average jam session can sound pretty darn good. |
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It was at The Last Watering Hole were degenerate DC rolled the worst joint in the entire history of smoking. |
| Day 1 Arrival |
Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 New Year's Eve |
Day 5 New Year's Day |
Day 6 | Day 7 & Departure |
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