Amsterdam

I'm back in Zurich with the family! Feels good to be back to the familiarity (somewhat) of having dishes to wash, meals to cook and baby to sit. We came home to an awesome Bak Kut Teh meal filled not only with pork ribs but fish balls, wantons and dumplings. BAsically it was a very nice, processed meat meal which served as a good end to the holiday in Benelux!

According to the mother, Benelux refers to the country combination of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. I'll start with Netherlands, also known as Holland, also known as the underdog team that made it to the World Cup finals last year (WOOHOO). The only thing I actually remembered about them was that they had the awesomest colour combination.

Anyhows, what does a better job than pictures right? 

On the Mercedes Benz taxi from the airport to hotel. I love it that all the cabs are either BMWs or Mercs, makes me feel so rich when I'm not, haha...

 We spent the first 2 nights at Hilton (as provided by the tour), which was pretty fantastic apart from the fact that they always charge you 22 Euros for a day of internet (Retarded shits..), so I had very limited internet throughout because the tour company appears to have plenty of ties with Hilton (Darn!)

But look what they had! A PILLOW MENU!

FLUFFY!! I didn't bother to try though

 And many of you would know the association Amsterdam has with liberal laws regarding weed and prostitution. Here's a cute write up I found in the guide book provided by the hotel. Zoom in and have a read!

 The entire area outside the hotel was surrounded by sculptures and displays, here're just a few I took

The beautiful sunny sky!

 The streets of Amsterdam are really easy to maneouver around, and almost everyone has a bicycle. You'll see in the pictures below on the crazy amount of bicycles in the city!

One of the random areas next to a park where people parked their bikes. It was like that the whole stretch

And the very economical looking car! Looks like a very very old version of the smart cars we have in Australia.

 Amsterdam is pretty much like Venice, a city surrounded by water, possibly sinking and structured around canals. The -dam in Amsterdam actually does refer to the dam that is in the area (as do many of the other cities in Holland such as Rotterdam). So of course a canal cruise was part of the tour (yawn) it was pretty cool though, cos we got to see a lot of the boat houses. I can't imagine living in a boat house for your entire life!

And guess what I had for brekkie the next day? ? RAMBUTANS!

Random shot of the grass/clouds/electrical wires as we went out to the country side

 What else is Holland famous for besides weed, prostitutes, dams and tulips? Cheese and wooden clogs of course. Typical tourist fare...

Mummy mummy look at my giant feet!!

 And this shot was hilarious! A bunch of girls walked into Maccas with heads full of curlers! Brilliant aint' it? hahahha.. I sneaked a shot.

And what's a visit to Amsterdam without going through the red light district? It truly was eye opening, not many photos of the place though, cos it's not very ncie to take pictures of the ladies at work. They basically sit in windows and do their own thing, whether it's texting, or talking on the phone etc. You really get to see all shapes and sizes and ages though.

Goods they sell

The bicycle multi-story 'carpark'!

 What did I tell you about the amount of bikes??

A nice random arty farty picture of a building 

 To be honest, I wasn't listening much to the tourguide. She had the amazing ability to lull me to sleep anytime of the day.

And that's only Day 1 of Amsterdam! Don't worry, I won't be boring you with daily summaries, just the key points in each area. blog more about the diamonds tomorrow! They were pretty amazing, and I never saw a rock so upclose before, haha..

Adios!