Birthday in Amsterdam

I’m alive!

I made it to Amsterdam, I had a bloody good time, and I made it back home to Westhoughton in one piece. There was definitely one point during the trip I thought that might not happen – on a little boat, in the middle of a canal, with Traum steering and two huge tour boats coming from both directions…. But we’ll get to all that.

I left work on Friday at about 3.30pm and made my way to Gatwick. I got my EasyJet flight (30 minutes late) over to Amsterdam and the train to Centraal station. I found my hostel and dumped my stuff in my room, a cosy 18 bed dorm, then headed up to the bar where I made some friends around the pool table. Playing pool with people who’ve been in Amsterdam for a couple of days takes a while…..

The next morning, MY BIRTHDAY, I got up fairly early put my stuff in a locker and left the hostel to explore Amsterdam, first stop I went for breakfast with a couple of people I’d met the night before. I had the traditional Dutch dish uitsmijters at a place I’d read about, Letting – turns out its thick cut ham, three fried eggs with melted cheese all on top of toast. Ace! I left there and my new American friends and wandered around the city for the rest of the day. I found the hostel we’d be staying in once the girls arrived and spent a lot of time in Dam square watching the street performers (some better than others). I also stumbled upon a huge crowd of Celtic fans who were in town to see their team play Ajax in a pre-season ‘friendly’ (they suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat).

I eventually strolled up to the train station, via my hostel to collect my bag, and met Cam, Traum, Calla and Summerleigh who had arrived right on time. We jumped on the tram and set off towards our hostel where we’d stay for the next three nights. The hostel was set right on the edge of the 120 acre Vondelpark. We freshened up and wasted no time getting the beers in and cards out. We enjoyed happy hour down at the hostel bar then headed out to The Bulldog and on to a bar just off Rembrantplein. A lot of dancing and drinking later, we returned to our beds, stumbled up to the top bunks and realised it was almost 5am!

A few sore heads the next day was the least we could have expected. Luckily, the amount of bread, ham, cheese and eggs served at breakfast managed to soak a good deal of the alcohol up and meant we could go and explore the city. It was a great way to spend my birthday and Amsterdam is such a cool city. I’ll definitely be back because even after my second trip there are still things I didn’t manage to get to.

Between Sunday and Tuesday we took in a lot of the Amsterdam sites and sounds including hiring a boat (and causing chaos by crashing into a houseboat), visiting Anne Frank’s house and the Heineken Experience which was fantastic!

We landed at Manchester airport and went our separate ways safe in the knowledge that the picture would surface on Facebook very shortly allowing us to relive the entire trip.

And that's it. That's all you're getting. Because, what happens in Amsterdam must definitely stay in Amsterdam. Forever.

Dad and I headed back to Westhoughton so I could continue my week of annual leave and prepare for the start of the Games… which I will tell you all about in the next post to following in the not too distant future. I’m currently 2 West Ham station shifts into my volunteering and already pretty knackered but I’ll power through these 9 DAYS STRAIGHT and find time to blog about it too!

Until next time,

Bren x

More photos from the trip: