Saturday 10th May 2008
Thursday night I went to see Strike Anywhere at Bitterzoet and Friday we all finished work at 7.00pm, chilled in the courtyard with the Kaiser guys and then headed off for an evening in Vondel Park. Nothing of worth to mention really other than evenings in Dutch parks are a lot better than English parks as the 15 years old's with attitude cider are missing and are replaced by families having BBQ's.
So Saturday we agreed to meet at Amsterdam Centraal at 12.30pm to take the train to Zandfoort for a day at the beach. I was slow in getting myself together so missed the 12.45pm train with Charlotte, Tim and Steve and took the 1.15pm train. The train ride was pretty horrible as it was packed and hot and there are no windows on Dutch trains, only air vents. I had agreed to meet the guys at Zandfoort and we were to take a walk along the coast to Bloemendal. When I arrived the guys had already headed up there, as the beach was so packed. So, I set off on what turned to be a 30 minute walk along the coast. I didn't mind though as it was blisteringly hot and Paul Oakenfold kept me company. I finally found them in an awesome bar which would not have looked out of place in a Mediterranean resort.
We sat on the beach for a couple of hours and attempted to swim, but, were put off by the smell of fish, the algae and the general brownness of the water. I knew it was the north sea, but the sun and sand made me think that the water could potentially fit with that.
After some time in the sun, we moved back to the bar where a wedding was taking place next door and preceded to chill for the rest of the day and into the night. The oddest part of the day was when the barstaff asked us to move from our seats so that a VW camper van could get out of the gate. It had been in the bar with a DJ booth in it and they had to move a lot of the chairs to accommodate it. What with the hour difference to home, the sun doesn't set till much later, so it was still light at 9.30pm/10.00pm. We walked back along the beach which seemed a lot shorter coming back and caught the train back to Amsterdam. Any idea of going out in the evening was out of the window as we were all knackered from sitting round in the sun all day.
Sunday 11th May 2008
Another excursion to the seaside and another excursion that was just Steve, Tim, Charlotte and myself as everyone else flaked! This time we went to the city beach on Ijburg called Blijburg beach which is located 40 minutes West of Amsterdam by bike. In my diligence, I decided before we set off to go to the bike shop and pump up my tires. After i had pumped the back one up sufficiently, I put the dust cap on and BOOOMMM the tire exploded. Luckily the shop had a hire bike so whilst they took my bike in to fix the tire, I borrowed one of their bikes or €2.50 a day which was a bargain. Anyway, I headed off to the station and met everyone at 1.20pm. The ride to the beach was amazing, through the harbour, over bridges with amazing views and on to the man made islands which house new residence projects and industry. We spotted a beach through a housing estate and headed for it, but it turned out we were at the wrong place. It was quite weird to see people bathing on a beach with pylons flying overhead and the beach area leading onto a river.
We carried on, and eventually came to Blijburg beach. It was semi-ridiculous how busy it was. It was the dutch bank holiday and was akin to Brighton beach between the two piers on a bank holiday weekend. We found a spot surrounded by lots of topless girls and settled down to some tunes blasting from my iDock. My Psoriasis has been quite bad the past couple of weeks so I took every opportunity I could this weekend to get into the sun to clear it up. It definitely worked as well.
We had a few beers, had a swim in the clean water and then at around 6.00pm headed home. The ride back was so much quicker than the ride there, probably because we knew where we were going. We had some tapas once back in Amsterdam and then I went home for a nap. In the evening we went for some more drinks and ended up in a crazy Dutch bar where I made a pact with a sailor, to meet him back at the bar in exactly one years time and to know all of the Dutch songs.
Monday 12th May 2008
Bank holiday Monday. I decided i wasn't tanned enough so went out in the sun for 2 hours with no cream on and got burnt. Not badly burnt where it hurts, but nicely red. Great for my skin! Met up with Steve and Andy and chilled in the park for the rest of the day. Went and saw Andy's flat and my future home and I'm really excited about moving in.
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