Adventures in Euroland: Day 11

Amsterdam - better in the morning? Not by much...
I think due to our sheer amout of disappointment with our initial impression of Amsterdam yesterday Nick and I did not bother leaving the hotel until about noon today.

Amsterdam does not look much better in the sunlight. We meandered around trying to decide which museum to check out. I think our indecisiveness stemmed from being worried about having such another negative experience. We stumbled upon a canal tour, which we thought would be pretty safe, so we decided to take that.

It wasn't too bad. It was about an hour, and the boat was pretty cool. It was long and flat and had a glass roof on it so you could see all the buildings. Amsterdam is all built on wood planks and the city is slowly sinking, like Venice. The buildings lean all different directions in some places, I will have to add pictures later.

To be honest, I spent most of the tour watching a little kid on the boat terrorize the people he was with. Some super grungey lookig guy and his wife/girlfriend/mistress. He was wearing a wedding ring and she was definitely not. The kid was throwing his soda can all over and at one point bit the lady's finger. She screamed really loud and then sat in her seat and cried. The kid didn't even get scolded. The guy was like, "are you gonna say you are sorry?" and the kid laughed and spit out a chunk of her fake nail. GROSS.

After that Nick and I saw the flower market, which was really cool actually. It was like three or four blocks of flower venders. They had all kinds of plants, every type you can think of. I saw lots of cacti and thought of dad. There were sooo many different kinds I think he would have wanted to buy them all. I also saw Bonsai trees and tulips and all kinds flowers, some orchids, and venus fly traps, lots of bulbs for every type of flower, all sorts of starter kits, including a grow your own cannabis kit.

We had lunch, the food here is not as good as Germany. Not by any stretch.

We also walked around and found a local market with lots of street vendors. Some of the stuff they were selling was really cool. I liked one stall in particular which sold some really neat clothing. They had the coolest hoodies and jackets I have ever seen in my LIFE. If I had not already gotten my Swatch I would have bought a jacket hands down. But I did get their website for future purposes. In case anyone is interested... here are the jackets we saw. I thought they were AMAZING. I really liked the ones by Gado Gado. SUCH cool clothing.

We headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit, since we walked all over the place. It was about 4, so we'd been walking for about 4 hours or so, minus half an hour for lunch.

One thing to note is that Amsterdam is FULL of bikes. I'm positive bikes outnumber cars at least three to one. So people are used to getting around by bike, on foot, or on the bus/trolly. So things are very crowded as I mentioned in my last post. Plus you have to watch out for tons of bicyclers. Dad, you would HATE it here just because of THAT alone.

Ladies of the night...
Anyway, after a few hours of down time we headed back out in search of food. Nick looked up this asian place that was supposed to be really good. So we headed in that direction. When we stopped to look at a map for directions, the inevitable happened: we realized our restaurant was precariously close to the Red Light district.

We kinda looked at each other... and back at the map, then back at each other.

Morbid curiosity won over.

The decision was made.

The place we wanted to eat had an hour wait so we put our name in for a table and headed one block to the north. As soon as we set foot in the next street over we were greeted with red lights and neon in the shape of busty women.

I promptly ran away.

I stood in the little alley between main streets and giggled like an idiot for a while. I told Nick maybe we should just cross the street, and not walk along the red light district, just to be safe. So we could kind of test the water, as it were. He agreed. So we bravely ventured out from our alley into the Red Light District. And right on through to the other side.

It wasn't that bad. We could see lots of sex toy shops all along the streets, neon sigs of naked women, bars, and LOTS of red lights. The red light district is literally FULL of red lights. Even the street lamps have red bulbs in them.

We went across and over to the next street, which was relatively safe. We went down another block and decided to cross back over through the red light district to the street our restaurant was on. Upon doing so we saw a sex theatre and in the alley there are lots of windows with real live girls standing in them in their lingerie solicing to people. Almost all of them were smoking.

I didn't really see a lot. I was staring with great intensity at the back of the person-ahead-of-me's back. So most of what I saw I saw out of the corner of my eyes. Don't judge me dear reader, I was curious, but intensely freaked out. I wanted to go back again, just for the sake of this blog, but I couldn't do it. Dad, please don't be too disappointed in me, I went to the red light district, I just can't tell you much about it. :p

Nick and I opted to wander in another direction instead, the whole time Nick was teasing me about getting me a lap dance, you know, for the sake of my blog. Jerk. To be fair, I did ask him if he thought they took women clients as well as men, and he said we could go back and ask one. To which of course I freaked out. It's my own fault really. I'm too easy to pick on. : /

ANYWAY. He was just being silly, because we were both sort of embarassed about the whole thing and I think we both respond to awkwardness with humor. It really isn't too different from Vegas I suppose, except they are probably more open about it here.

On a slightly unrelated but just as humorous note, there is a GIANT church right at the end of the red light district. Somehow, neither Nick nor I were surprised by this fact.

That sums it up.
The food was terrible, sadly, and we returned to the hotel feeling more or less bemused but ready to go home. I'm not sure what we are going to do tomorrow but I can honestly say I am ready to come back to the states. I do not care for Amsterdam much although it has been an intersting experience to say the least.

Who knows what we'll end up doing tomorrow, but the day after I will fly home, so that is great news to me. I flew coach on the way to Europe and I am just going to check into upgrading to first class for the flight home. I expect it to be several thousand dollars or more points than I have to upgrade but I want to at least ask. Coach for 8 hours blows, but at least I will have a window seat this time.



P.S. I have also decided to write the Ballad of Tiffani Visits the Red Light District, it would be similar to Monty Python's song about Brave Sir Robin Bravely Running away. Some possible lines include:

"When Naked reared its ugly, tiffani bravely turned her tail and fled,
Yes Tiffani turned about and gallantly she chickened out."

http://tiffanitravelblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/adventures-in-euroland-ballad-of.html

Adventures in Euroland: Day 5

Das Schloss!

Tour of the castle. It was amazing!

There are a couple different parts to the Castle. There was a church building, walls around the castle, a newer finished part to the castle, a tower, a keep, and a part that was being renovated. The castle has been built a few different times, having been destroyed or having parts of it destroyed since it was first built in 1050 A.D. WOW.

I cannot explain how cool it is to be standing in something that old. It was also very creepy. You just get a weird feeling being around/in something with that much history attached to it. As I mentioned before the castle has been burned down or destroyed several times, it was used as a prison and has a dungeon, so many people have died there as well.

To the left are pictures of the inside of the furnished and finished part of the castle itself. (I think you can click on the pictures to pull up a full sized version) The dining room, a mosaic on the floor, etc. Everything was very elaborately and richly decorated. It was a mixture of Gothic, Neo-Gothic, and Rococo architecture and interior decoration styles.

 Not a single detail was overlooked. Even the ceilings were richly decorated. I have pictures of carvings on the wood paneling, of tiny details EVERYWHERE. At some point I will put up a gallery and link to it, but for now here are some of my favorite pictures from the castle.

Here is a picture from the library. It's hard to see because it was pretty dark inside the castle, but all of the wood work was carved with incredible detail.

 One of the family lines who lived in the castle at one point had a swan as part of their crest. I think it looks more like a Flamingo because every time you see it is painted red, or the red has faded to kind of a pink color. If my Aunt Doni had a family crest, it would probably be a flamingo and look something like this. :)

 Here is a real honest to goodness Treasure Chest. The D&D side of me couldn't resist getting a shot of this.

Family lines and crests of 'Lords of the Castle'.

 A more detailed family record for families who have owned/occupied the castle at various points throughout history.

This stuff also made me think of my Aunt Doni, who works for the Repository dealing with illegal imports of animal products into the US. She sees stuff like this all the time, except usually more exotic. Aside from the antlers everywhere they even had serving dishes and utinsles made out of deer hooves!

Some really neat examples of armor on display.

 Another shot of the outside of the castle.

 My favorite part of the castle were the unfinished parts. The battery tower and the keep were both carved stone like this and unfinished. The tower used to house cannons for defending the castle and prison cells. I got the strangest vibe from being in the tower and the tower basement. The tower featured the spiral staircases you usually see when people draw or make movies about castles. Well, they really do have spiral stair cases in towers like that, although the steps are a lot more narrow than I would have guessed. It's hard to tell, but I tried to take a picture of my feet on the stairs. I have pretty small feet and not even my whole foot fit on the step at close to the widest part of the stair. It made climbing the tower a tiny bit nerve wracking, but still VERY COOL.

Spiral Stair Case of AWSOMENESS.

 Very old, very steep wooden stair case in the keep tower.

More stairs to the top of the keep tower.

Looking out over the castle gardens and to the north-west from the keep.

The castle as seen from the keep.

The church steeple as seen from the wall near the keep.

The keep itself. This part of the castle is roughly 30 meters high and you can climb all the way to the top and look out between the crenelations. The walls are 5.5 meters or 16.5 feet thick. (Yes, they really are that thick. You can see how thick they are when you look out the windows of the keep from the inside) I didn't get a picture of it, but at the ground floor there is a square hole that was roped off and had a grate over it. I later read that this is called an Angstloch or "Fear Hole" and that it goes straight down over 12 meters into the dungeon. There are no lights and no windows in the dungeon and the only way in or out is via a wench that used to be installed directly over the hole. In Medieval times it was used as a prison. In more recent years it was used as a gun powder storage room. Either way, it was a very dark hole and gave me the chills.

I spent a good two hours just roaming the grounds looking at everything and taking lots of pictures. And after I left, I still didn't feel like I had taken enough. The tour was only 3,50€ and WELL Worth it. I wish I spoke German and could have taken the tour, but the lady in the office was kind enough to dig up a guide book about the castle in English which she let me have. :D On my way out I told her "Dankeschehen! Es ist wunderschön!"

Here is a picture of the inside of the church.

I also included this picture because Nick and I had a conversation about how people probably take for granted that they live in a city (or even in a country) which has historical sights that are older than our nation. Like, "Oh... yeah, I pass the castle on my way to school or work every day. Its no big deal." We don't have things anywhere near as old as this that are man made in North America, but as you can see by the graffiti on the door to this prison cell in the Battery Tower, people over here don't seem to take notice....