Day 01 - Very Special Ontertainment:  It's going to be hard to keep my trip to Amsterdam brief.   Already so much has happened in the first day here.  I caught the 10.50am train from Brussels to Amsterdam and arrived just before 2pm.  I found my way onto the number 5 tram and a lady showed me how to stamp my ticket.   When I got off the tram with my huge overloaded suitcase 2 boys from Melbourne came over and jumped on me.   Paul and Joe are also travelling around Europe.   But sadly it was their last day in Amsterdam and are heading to Berlin.  But they did take me out to the Happy Hour at a bar nearby and we drank about 20 beers within the hour...  I then staggered to a restaurant to eat.   Later the boys took me to a cocktail bar, where we got thrown out because they forgot to be discrete when snorting coke.   So we headed for a tour of the red light district.   Now I have to say that it's one of the most amazing sites I have seen on this trip.   There really are streets and streets of girls posing in their underwear behind red lit glass doors.  The girls are constantly opening and closing their squeaky doors to get your attention and blow you kisses as you walk by.   I thought one particularly savage looking girl rubbing her tummy and gyrating when she saw us coming was going to chase me as she opened the door and started yelling something at us.
Then the boys took me to see where the bars the Eagle, the Cockring, the Web, and some others that I have forgotten the names of right now.  All of them were pretty quiet but I will go back over the next few days to check them out.   The city itself is pretty interesting with it's winding streets and pretty canals.   I have dropped and broken my glasses in the guesthouse shower so I have to get those fixed quickly, then I can go touring.

Day 02 - Shopping:  It started out as a working day as I set out to get my glasses fixed and buy some shorts.   I ended up buying a pair of G-stars pants and a pair of leather pants!   Well...  the leather pants just about blew my Amsterdam budget...  but hey...  I've always needed these!   Now I am REALLY worried about my luggage.  So I got some freight rates from the post office so I can send some stuff home.   I kinda got lost on the way back to the guesthouse and ended up going in and asking a shop owner where I was.   Amsterdam is crazy with bikes, trams, cars and tourists.  When you cross the road you have to look out for all this traffic...  it's a bit mad.  Later in the evening I headed back up to the red light district thinking I would take in a live sex show...   but I couldn't find the place again.  So I headed into Warmostraat for a burger before heading home.

Day 03 - Hot Hot Hot:  It has been so hot here!   And I still have not bought the shorts yet.   Today I walked all over Amsterdam.  I headed out first to the Anne Franhuis, the Homomonument, and the  walked forever before finding the Albert Cuyp markets.   And because it is so hot I went and spent the afternoon hanging out in and around the Leidesplein Square.  I tried out the Australian Shop's icecream.    It was thick and creamy and was the perfect end to a perfect summer's afternoon in Amsterdam....  then the fire engines came and ran over all the cafe tables to get to a burning house.
Speaking of dodgy houses...   there are many houses who's timber foundation have rotted and sunk.  So there are a lot of tall buildings in the city being held up by huge logs.   It's amazing to see.
It's Friday night so I'm now planning on going out late to eat and check out a few bars here.

Casa Rosso - I paid 30 Euros to bring you this story so you'd better read every word!  Last night I was too early to visit some of the bars I wanted to see so I walked over to the red light district to look around.   I decided that I would go and have a look at one of the live sex shows.   First I went into a room full of booths where you had to drop in a 2 Euro coin to see a woman in the inner circle naked and pulling all kinds of poses.  The disturbing image here was that you could see all of the other ogling men in their little booths.  I think Madonna once used this in one her film clips.
Well I quickly got out of there and headed further along to the Casa Rosso theatre where there was a line up to go in and the sounds of people cheering coming from inside.   So I lined up...  got stung the 30 Euros and waited with all the Brit and Asian tourists to go inside.   Once inside I decided that I needed to be close so I could see every vacant facial expression so I headed straight for the front row.   Whilst I was sitting down there was a large muscular black man doing a very quick love making routine with a good looking black women in time to the music.   I won't go into the gory details but some of his moves were pretty impressive...  even if her face didn't reflect it.   I was mostly impresses by the rotating bed that would rise and fall in the middle of the stage.  Immediately I wondered if the Loft could accommodate such a thing?   The compere (spelling?) announced that the couple were finished, the cigarette burned curtain closed and we all gave them a clap.  

In a minute's time the curtain reopened and a women had come out in a crazy leather outfit and started whipping the poles with her whip and sliding up and down them.  And in no time at all she had pulled a heart shaped mattress out of no where, flung it to the floor and was straddling a dildo on it !   Her show quickly ended with closing curtains and the clap..
When the curtains reopened there appeared a large man in a cloak and hood, and a woman appeared from the back of the theatre in front of him.  She was wearing a full rubber nun's habit!   Very impressive.   They quickly removed all of their fancy gear and without any warm up at all the woman was taking all of his extremities inside of her!   I even flinched in my seat and I saw how quickly accommodating she was!   Oh...  and she gave the guy a blow job...  and the look of pain on his face was priceless!
Next!  It seems to be that these shows are all tease.   There is a lot of lead up to the action...  then when it begins the show is over.   Now we are started to see chubbier girls with overweight men.   One of the girls had hairy arms and men's facial features.   What impressed me most was how choreographed each of the routines are.  It's like they have done them every night for years. Then there was an audience participation section.  The banana show.  During this show a girl on stage went down and selected 3 guys from the audience and dragged them onto the stage.   She whispered things to them, danced with them, then lied down and told each of them to take a bite of a banana protruding from her vagina.    It was quite funny because she had chosen all quite nerdy boys and each of them were trying to play it very cool.  
The theatre sells 2 kinds of tickets, with drinks included, and without drinks.   I took without.   Anyway, during the shows they place just as much importance on getting the drinks out to the audience as they do on the show.   But the boy giving out the drinks was being a little too timid.  As the last girl  (that I saw) was getting well and truly rodgered  (and you wouldn't have known it from her facial expression) the drinks boy was at the front of the theatre calling out, rum and coke, who ordered the rum and coke...  and it seemed to go on forever...  to the point where it was getting ridiculous.   But he was doing it so timidly that whoever did order the drink couldn't hear him.   Eventually the girl lying on the stage tilted her head to the side and yelled "WHO'S GOT THE RUM AND COKE!"
I knew it couldn't get better than this so I left.

Day 03 - Continued:  After my trip to the Casa Rosso theatre I headed back to Warmostraat and paid my $3.50 to go in and take a look around the Cockring.   It's a small dance/bar which has made use of every possible corner in the place.  Upstairs is a laid back bar atmosphere with people drinking and watching the p0rn movies playing over the bar.   And downstairs is a disco playing some great music.  I was there in the "standing around waiting for someone to start dancing" stage.   I stayed here for an hour or so as the place started to get packed and eventually left at about 2am to head for home.

Day 04 - Lazy Day:  It has finally cooled down in Amsterdam so I slept in a little.   Then I went and ate breakfast and met some of the other guests staying here at the Golden Bear Inn.   The guesthouse is really quite nice.  But the stairs up to the rooms are the steepest smallest stairs I have ever seen.  And again..  this place is a maze.  There are rooms all over the place.   I went walking again today and did a little shopping.  I even went back to Mr B to get a few things.   It's much brighter here now and I'm missing my sunglasses.  I thought about going out for so long in the night that eventually I decided to stay in and give my throat a rest from the smoky bars.   It's still sore which is starting to worry me again.   And tomorrow I will wake up early to go and look around the Hague.

Day 05 - Den Hague:  My last day in Amsterdam and I decided to go out on a date.  The plan was to travel to the Hague by train and we'd meet at the Hague Central station.   Well I made the trip down south about 1 hour and got stood up.  This would have to go on record as the worst stand up ever.   It was a bit of a waste of half a day...  and it meant that I missed the one cooked breakfast of the week at the B&B too.   But it was nice to see some of the countryside outside of Amsterdam.   The day did however get much better.  It was a brilliant sunny Sunday afternoon.  So I headed to the Thermos club which has a rooftop sun deck.  So I went and sunbaked for a little while before heading out for a walk along the canals.  Apart from the mosquitoes they attract the canals really are a lot of fun in Amsterdam.  I sat and watched one "boat" after another pass by with some kind of party happening on each one.  They really do look like a lot of fun.  Some of them are grand with couches to lie out on, some are tiny and look like they could sink at any moment.   But every one of them had the same atmosphere on board, drinking and relaxing.   What a great way to spend the afternoon.   I've had a really nice relaxing time here in Amsterdam.   I would come back here again, but for a longer period of time.   I'm going back to London tomorrow to see Andrew again.

Den Hague Order:  The Dutch people are very similar to the Germans in that everything is done in a particular way.  There is very little variation from a process.  I discovered this as the toilet attendant woman at Den Hague Central train station tried to kick down the door of my toilet cubicle.   There were only 2 cubicles vacant...   one with no toilet seat and the other with no toilet paper.  So I took the toilet paper from the missing seat cubicle towards the good cubicle.  The woman ran up to me and snatched the roll and returned it to the missing seat cubicle and yelled at me to use that one.   As she left the room I took the toilet roll out again to the good cubicle, closed the door and proceeded with my business.  She quickly returned to find I had disobeyed her order and gave the door 2 swift kicks.   She then left...   but of course my imagination had me thinking she had gone for the police to drag me from the cubicle.   So my business was quick and I got out of there without seeing her again.   This was the best entertainment for jut 50 cents!   Den Hague Central station toilets....   enter at your own risk.

Day 06 - EasyJet:  Today I went through the most amazing transfer ever.  The trip involved:
Tram
Train
Plane
Bus
Bus
Train
Train
Phew....  all is just 4 hours!  And I'm back in London.   Sure I saved a lot of money by flying EasyJet into Luton Airport, but there was a lot of extra time taken to get into London from Luton.   It was so good to see Andrew again.  It felt like I had come home.  We quickly went out into the city to do some shopping and eat in a nice Lebanese restaurant near the Selfridges department store.

Day 07 - Back in London:   I started the day with Andrew organising a doctor to take a look at my sore throat.   It was really funny.  It was like we were going underground to get quick cheap medical advice.  And when we arrived at the meeting place a man came out of  shop and had to enter a PIN number to open the security door to let us into a single basement room to see the doctor.  The good news is that I have just a virus which should clear pretty quickly.   He prescribed some mouth gargle and sent me on my way.   To celebrate my good health we headed into the SOHO Athletic Club for a quick workout.   And it felt so nice to do some good stretching.  I'm starting to feel better already.   The alarming thing is that I lost 5 kilos over the past couple of weeks.  I am now down to 65kgs!   I can't remember when I was ever this weight.   Maybe before I started gyming.   It makes my abs look great...   but I would prefer to be a little heavier.   I won't fly away in the wind so easily.    And tonite we headed down to Balans in Earls Court for a lovely dinner.  Along the way we bumped into Wendy Worthington from Melbourne....  it's such a small world!

PHOTOS

The graffitied Belgium train to Holland	Snacks along the way		The blue screen barely hides the urinal on the train platform	Not a bad start for the first hour in Amsterdam	Look who I bumped into!
	Who?	The Red Light district is busy every night of the week	Ye olde city square	For bars and the edge of the Red Light district	Some building sinking into the ground.  The logs hold them up
Hmmm...   I think I would move out at this stage	Vincente showed me some of his hometown	These Australian icecream shops are everywhere!		The trams remind me of Melbourne
	Brekky at the Inn		The Homomonument		Boy boat
Leidseplein Square	Can you remember which is yours?	Albert Cuyp Markets			Thanks boys...
Evil shopping	The Golden Bear Inn	Travelling down to the Hague	A busy Sunday afternoon on the canals	A quick tanning session on the sun deck	Cooties be gone!