Pimps, hoes, and Anne Frank

Monday, July 18, 2005:

So begins our second day at Amsterdam with our first Dutch breakfast buffet of pretty much the same thing as London and Paris! We joined the group to go see Anne Frank's house. We didn't do our traditional bus tour since the streets are too small and narrow for a tour bus to go through. Anyways, so the building that Anne Frank and her family lived in a hiding during the war was turned into a museum. We got to walk around and look at artifacts and watch testimonials of people who knew the family. It was very sad and fascinating at the same time to hear the stories and see the living conditions they had to deal with for years.

After touring the museum Ray and I decided to become a local and rent bikes for two days. It's crazy how many bikes there are in this town. I swear, there's more bikes than cars! We were a bit apprehensive (or maybe it was just me) since drivers there drive just as crazy as the ones in London and Paris. What we found though was that it was a lot better than walking. It felt as though the drivers were more in tune and aware of bicyclists than they were of pedestrians! I had no problems manuevering through the streets. The only issue we had were the oblivious tourists who didn't know how to get out of the way when you're ringing your bell incessantly!

We biked all over Amsterdam just enjoying the scenery and getting great exercise. We eventually stopped for lunch at Peking Restaurant where we ate decent Chinese food for a reasonable price. We dined on an appetizer sampler of shu mai, egg roll, skewers, and fried wonton, and we shared a plate of rice and bbq pork. I was so stuffed!

After lunch we headed to the Red Light District because that's where it's AT! As usual there were a lot of sex shops, sex shows (for $30 and you don't even know what you're getting into!), peep shows, but alas, no Sexodrome! We eventually found the area where all the prostitutes were after spending forever looking for it! You hear all the stories about how you pretty much "window shop" for a prostitute there but it doesn't really prepare you for the reality of it. We walked down a little alley where the buildings had tall windows. In each window there was a girl in a bikini either sitting on a stool lounging about or just standing there staring out the window, trying to lure some horny, pathetic person. Surprisingly the girls were normal-looking! I was actually expecting hot blondes with flat abs and big boobs topless, but they were actually normal-sized women that could easily be your friend, co-worker, whomever.

Once we were finished gawking and being shocked we decided to check out one of the many museums Amsterdam had to offer. After much discussion, comparison of prices we finally decided on the......Erotic Museum! Ahahhahahaha!!! The museum was five levels of naked people. They had a lot of paintings, statues, etc. They even had cartoon porn! Yep! Cartoon porn! It was soooo funny. Not only was it cartoon porn, but it was cartoon porn with animal characters. So imagine a Bugs Bunny look-alike doing it with a girl. ahahhahaha!!! I thought that was pretty funny until I saw the larger than life (and beyond) penis!

After our adventures in the Red Light District we headed back to the hotel to figure out dinner. After chaining up our bikes we ran into Tom and Tyjuana at a cafe nearby. We ended up joining them for dinner. Ray had a pepperoni pizza and I had a spinach cream pasta. It was soooo good! Tyjuana had pizza too and Tom had this teeny tiny chicken dish. It was so funny! He didn't realize how small the portion was so he ended up having to eat some of Tyjuana's pizza. After dinner we walked over to Jamin's to have some yummy ice cream. Yes, we are craaaazy for ice cream! We then joined them and another familiar for a canal cruise. It was really nice. It looked like it was going to rain but luckily it didn't. We then went back to the same cafe and had some drinks. We had a horrible waiter. He took forever (longer than usual in Europe) serving us and he wasn't very nice. We were literally there for almost 2 hours and all we had were drinks! We didn't get back to the hotel until after 11 p.m.