Green eggs and hampsterdam

I got up and searched in vain for a cafe open before 9am, how do these people function without a coffee in the morning? Everyone must have machines at home. Clearly there are not many IT workers. The cafes here also are not really cafes, they are pubs that sell coffee. Much like the coffee shops aren't actually coffee shops they are cafes that sell weed. None of these places are open serving coffee when you really need it.

Anyway, I biked around for a bit and eventually it was 8:50am and a place looked to be open, but on entry they informed me that they wouldn't serve until 9am. After waiting at the tables outside a waitress came out and I was able to order some bacon pancakes. Yes that's right, bacon pancakes, this was well worth waiting for until 9am I guess.

Anne Frank's house was nearby so I went to see if I could get in, the queue to enter was already massive so I just decided to keep riding around and admiring the beautiful canal scenery.

I ended up at a bar called Hoppe. The building was built in the 1600s and was beautiful. It was also in a busy area with heaps of people to watch (until it started raining) while I had my beer. I also ordered some beef crockets on bread(speciality of the region) which although weird was pretty nice.

The Dutch apparently haven't realised there's better things since sliced bread.

Had to ride out the showers with a couple beers.

Later on I went to the red light district and had a walk around past the sex shops and all the window girls. Most of the girls in the windows were really good looking, it was quite surprising. It started raining so I figured I'd go see a sex show as you do. The couple performing were pretty fit and also good looking but it was a bit robotic. Maybe they had had a few shows that day. The place was nearly packed too. I was surprised there weren't more stags parties from England as I'd been told about. It just looked like a crowd of normal tourists. I guess there's probably more stag parties that comes over on the weekends.



On the way home I figured I'd go to a coffee shop to complete the Amsterdam experience. I found the closest one to the hotel I could find (so I wouldn't get lost) and went inside and got a spliff of hashish because the guy running the place said that was milder. Anyway I had it and wasn't too baked and even talked to some Americans that were in there. I even made it back to my hotel and up the 4 flights of stairs just in time to pass out.