Canals, bikes, sexy time and muffins: Amsterdam

As Editor In Chief of the blog (until Megan finds out that I promoted myself and fires me) it is with great sadness that I write our last blog entry. Cry-fest-09.

Canals, bikes, sexy time and weed really is how you sum up Amsterdam. By the time we arrived we were already starting to wind down as I mentally prepared myself to go home in two days. On top of that it was also grey and drizzly here as well so we probably didn't see it in it's prime - although I don't think any amount of sun could help Amsterdam scrub up. It was way cool in terms of the general vibe but it was definitely one of the dirtier places we had been - although what did we expect in a place famous for sex and drugs hmmm?

We did the usual routine of check in and go for a wander and before long we found ourselves eating :) We went to a cool little Spanish bar where the man owner had so much eyeliner he made us look like men. Fab food which put us in good spirits for the rest of the night. ..

Now I haven't checked with Megan as to how much I can say here with all the mums in the audience so just use your imagination...

Mmmmmm muffins...

At our cool little coffee shop that we found.

The main touristy kind of street that is just FULL of Cosmic corner type shops to the point where it's so over the top it's funny...

Megans favourite shop! Sadly the silver undies-penis-combo didn't fit her. She said the netting suit should look O.K by itself though...

We actually discovered the red light district on our first night by mistake. It was so low key we didn't realise that we were right in amongst it. I imagined it to be FULL of tourists and bit of a laugh but it was so sad. Just these girls/ladies in neon lit shop windows waiting for someone/anyone to come along. Pretty sad.

But far from sad were the pink bikes I kept seeing!

Oh more sexy time - we took photos from the outside so we could pretend we had been in...

And then I almost cried because my favourite artist/graffiti artist (Sheppard Fairey) had done this big outdoor exhibition thing near the station and I wept and wailed with joy as I took these photos...

And then we both wept and wailed this morning as we said goodbye.

It's been a rad trip but we cant wait to get back amongst it with everyone in NZ.

Adios!

See you soon Megano! Have fun in your kilt - hope it looks ok with the netting suit!

Brugge - in and out in 24 hours

Hi friends! I am suffering mixed emotions right now... rage at the sniffly snuffler man that was on the plane next to me (you are 50 years old.. stop sniffing please), depression that I am no longer with Megan who is on her way to Scotland and cabin fever after five hours at Heathrow airport.... and I cant even find a maccas! (I know Megan... I know!! Very Traumatic) :). Once I stopped crying over my loss (Megan) I realised this makes me Editor In Chief of the blog..... YUS.

So we left Paris a few days ago and headed to Brugge. The countryside around Brugge was heaps like Christchurch or... the Paraparamu area. Really green and on the day we arrived it was quite grey and drizzly. Our hostess definitely had the mostest - he was the most CLASSIC Brugian (made that up) that I could ever imagine meeting. I expected him to whip on a beer maid outfit and dance us a wee dance. He was just so damn happy and it was such a crack up to hear him replace all the th's with 'd' e.g. den da key will open de room (say this in a fat jolly man sing song type voice). In fact speaking of music he did play some mean piano and our hostel had the best music we have heard all trip! We rented bikes (proper dutch bikes) as soon as we got there and went for a cruise on the cobbled streets of Brugge (cobbled streets rattle your bones so it was quite dangerous to our health and we needed many chocolate shop stops to survive the traumer) and five minutes later we had seen all you needed to see :)

No there was probably a lot we didn't see but it was nice that it was so small because we just got a chance to chill and got take aways and ate them at our hostel because it was SO awesome and then the next day we just hooned on our bikes and visited the uber-extremo fresh food market - nothing like hot chicken and raspberries for breakfast. YUM.

Anyway enough with the banter - here are some pics from our good friend Brugge:

Our hostel common room had a piano, cool photography, chandeliers and the best tunes ever...


And the best bit of our whole hostel was the extreme art in our room: a stingray drinking wine with two crayfish on his plate... hmmmm... abstract!



The bone shakin cobbled streets - pretty but ruthless :) In fact we were so terrified of them that we got a 5 minute taxi to the train station so that we didn't have to wheel our bags along them :)

The main square where the market was the next day. It was surrounded by what seemed like very old buildings and it really did feel like we had gone back in time. Maybe we did...

The chocolate store where we spent approx one week of our pay...

Pretty parks and what not - and white swans just like in the movies. After seeing the swans my trip to Brugge was complete.

The insane number of bikes in Brugge was a huge surprise - I knew they loved de bike yah. But i didn't know they loved it enough to literally have 500+ - 1000 bikes outside the train station in a bike park. So cool!

Mmmmm markety goodness - fruit and veges for our deprived bodies! Oh and greasy amazing freshly cooked chicken.

And now for the only word we learnt while we were there....

Dankyou (thank you)! I just tried to check the spelling of that and given what urban disctionary came back to me with I don't think I have the spelling right :)