After a much needed break in Frankfurt, we headed off to
Amsterdam. Although its not in your face, you always have it in the back of
your head that this city is basically famous just for sex and drugs. The
problem is that the red light district is not small and its basically right
there in the centre of the city, along with quite a few tourist attractions and
also most of the hostels. The problem is that not only are the hostels located
in the weird areas, they are also expensive and shoddy at the same time. The
place where we finally got accommodated basically had 24 people in one room!
Other hostels had 12 also, but it was at least properly done, this was just a
bunch of beds shoved in a room. So apart from weed, the place also is (actually
was) famous for tulips. One of the most famous sites for this is Keukenhof.
This is basically a huge flower garden which has millions of tulips and other
flowers there and around the garden you have fields of tulips, red, green,
yellow, purple etc. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Well, 1 problem, since the winter
was very severe this year, the tulips bloomed late and although we hit the
place during the peak season (with a 30euro entry fee), the fields were almost
completely barren and even inside the park, the flowers weren’t in full bloom.
My cousins went about a month later and it was in full bloom then, so the
timing is really important for Keukenhof.
In any case, we came back and went out to do a bit of
shopping. Given Holland is famous for cheese, we bought some without knowing
anything about it. Then we also thought of buying some tulip buds, but drew the
line at that and went for something more familiar instead, the Heineken
Experience. Frankly, I don’t like Heineken, but the “museum” was actually quite
good, much better than Carlsberg. They had lessons of how to pour and drink
beer (as if it’s fine wine), they had the process of beer making explained and
apart from lots of gimmicky stuff, obviously they had beer tasting, but unlike
the Carlsberg here you could only have Heineken. Having finished the beer, we
rushed to another “tourist attraction” the “iamsterdam” sign. Its crap. Finally
we went to eat dinner and once again decided to splurge. Bad decision.
Amsterdam is not for food, you’re better off taking the Dutch fries off the
streets or just some cheap fast food that you can find everywhere. Actually the
fries are worth trying, cause its basically just fries with some weird sauces
but its amazing how something as simple as fries can be turned into something
completely different just with some mayo other simple toppings.
Anyways, in the night we came out for the big attraction of
the city. In one word, it was bizarre. It was like a bazaar for people, like
literally just a huge shop with people selling. You know how companies pay for
displays and use marketing techniques et al to sell. It’s all there, but the
thing about Amsterdam though is that anything goes and you will find sex
museums, cocoa museums, marijuana museums and anything else that is illegal or
frowned upon elsewhere.
Having spent a couple of days in Amsterdam, we left for
Bruges. I think its one of the nicest places I went during the trip. We reached
the station and saw a sea of students heading out of the city there. If you’ve
seen “In Bruges”, then trust me I can totally understand the frustration of
Colin Farell in the movie, cause we reached in the evening, went to the hostel
and came out to find the city closed at 5 pm. Nothing! And I mean literally nothing
was open apart from a few restaurants/pubs. It’s really a small sleepy town,
but its beautiful! The entire town is just 2km by 2km or so and you can cover
it 10 times in a day, but we spent two there and I think it was time well
spent.
When you think of a small quaint European town, Bruges would
be exactly the place you would be thinking of, it has lots of local shops
selling knick-knacks, lots of chocolates, its own local beer “Bruges zot” that
everyone swears by (and it is actually quite good), windmills at the edge of
town, a moat, canals, churches and obviously the clock tower. At this point of
the holiday, I think we stopped sightseeing and really started enjoying the
places we went. We had lots of waffles, fries and some beer as well. Chilled out
at the hostel bar and sat by the small lake watching swans when we wanted to. Maybe
it was the schedule easing out or maybe it was just the place. There is really nothing
else to do there except just chill. It’s really the ideal place to retire after
you’ve made your millions.
