Come follow the Sunshine: AmsterDAYUM

Arriving at 1am in Amsterdam is no fun, but turning up to THE #1 STEEPEST stair’s I have ever seen let alone climbed with our back pack’s on is downright painful! Then we get into our room which is 3 floors up, above a "coffee shop" (weed smoking cafe) and in the roof so we have to bend over not to hit our heads on the slanted ceiling. Our beds are two extremely dirty single mattresses squished into the room with a graffiti covered bedside table and bin. Our luck has finally run out and we have found ourselves stuck in one of those nightmare hostels you hear read online reviews about!

Our time in Amsterdam was actually really cool, there is a fair bit more to the city than just weed and the red light district.
We went to a cheese museum which was delicious and they ship to Australia so i'll be placing an order when i get home. Any cheese lovers (DK I'm looking at you) let me know we can place a joint order, ITS DELICIOUS!. We visited Gassan diamond factory and they showed us how they make an ugly looking rock into a sparkly diamond. Then to a sex museum which is only 4 Euro and pretty funny there are some statues that pop out the wall and umm expose themselves to you! See picture below. The Anne Frank Museum was fantastic, it was really amazing to be in the annex where they hid during the war. There were parts of the tour that almost brought me to tears because you are actually there and it feels really close to home as they are just a regular family, especially as i have read her diary. I also didn’t know from reading the diary that Anne found her best friend Hanneli while she was in a concentration camp and Hanneli tried twice to throw her packages over the camp fence of food and pictures to help her get through, there is a really sad video playing of Hanneli as an old lady speaking of this last contact with Anne. If anyone is going to the Anne Frank Museum, it opens at 9am, I suggest you get there at 8.30am, we arrived at 8.40am and there was about 50 people already waiting and by 8.45 it had doubled in size behind us! Amsterdam also makes a delicious waffle, both pre-packaged and fresh, we had the most amazing fresh cooked waffles with nutella and whipped cream one morning and everyday we were snacking on these pre packaged caramel waffles, they were way too addictive. Now for the bit's everyone wants to know, yes there is weed everything everywhere, every souvenir shop sells weed cookies, weed lolly pops, weed gum, weed tea, weed branded everything. This is as well as the "coffee shops" that don’t usually sell coffee just a few drinks because legally they must sell at least drinks (except alcohol which is not allowed to be served in the same place as weed and vice-versa) not just the weed. They sell all different types of weed from a menu and they apparently affect you differently depending on what type you try. Its quite cheap the "coffee shop" on the first floor of our hostel sells pre-rolled mixed weed and tobacco joints for 4 Euro or a weed only joint for 11 Euro. Apart from weed there is another drug sold in shops around Amsterdam that you don’t hear of as often, the shops are called smart shops and they sell these little boxes of truffles which are the root of a magic mushroom plant. They have all different types of truffles you can buy that give different affects, so it turns out not only weed is legal in Amsterdam it sort of seems like anything goes, weed/truffles/prostitutes its really weird to see this stuff sold legally in shops! But as i was saying there really is a cute little town of old windmills, cheese, waffles and canals to be seen not just legal drug shops.

On our first full night after arriving in Amsterdam we met up with Mel and Mark (our friends from La Tomatina in Valencia) for a massive night of dinner, drinking, statue climbing, red light district exploring & pub hopping! The red light district is everything you hear about window after window of prostitutes waving at you, except i had been told by a few people they were all unattractive which is not true they were almost all skinny and pretty that i saw. Let’s just say as I’m sure most of you have assumed by the awesome boozy facebook pic’s it was a big night and we suffered dearly in the morning but hey when in Amsterdam!