Amsterdam

The past week has been fairly eventful. My Mum came around at around eleven o'clock on Thursday morning to take me along to Edinburgh Airport. I was on the two o'clock flight. It all went smoothly enough and I got into Schipol Airport, Amsterdam at about four o'clock local time. I got a taxi from the airport to the hotel. The hotel was a two star hotel, and the room was very small, but the bed was comfortable enough and it had a TV, writing desk, and it's own washbasin, toilet and shower so it was fine. Breakfast was also included with the price, so every day I would have a couple of slices of bread with cheese, meat or jam along with coffee and orange juice.

Amsterdam is a really interesting city. It's built around a network of canals and so there were many barges and houseboats around and picturesque bridges (unfortunately my camera broke while I was there so I wasn't able to take any pictures). I took a trip around the canals on a boat, and saw the harbour and everything, which was really interesting.

Of course, Amsterdam does have a certain reputation and there are the famous hash-bars (or "coffeeshops" as they're known over there). The way it works is that cannabis is not technically legal, but it's sale and use is allowed in licensed coffeeshops which are all over Amsterdam. They are worth going in to just because they are so bizarre, the smoke is usually so thick in there that you could probably get eight miles high just walking from the door to the counter, and they have large menus like a restaurant of all the different kinds of cannabis you could try (I'd never really indulged and I was surprised how many types they were). There was also a non-smoking section usually, and you could get drinks. The best one that I went to was a really large place that was big enough for people to smoke away without bothering anyone else, and had a good selection of drinks and snacks. Of course, for anyone who likes sex, there was also the legendary Red Light District, where you get a selection of sex shops, porno theatres and "peep shows" (which have absolutely nothing to do with the hilarious sitcom of the same name) as well as the (legal) prostitutes sitting in windows in their underwear, tapping away to attract the attentions of passers-by. It's like a sex theme park almost, and it's a big tourist attraction. There were rampaging mobs of drunken British tourists, as well as people who were really into it and were definitely there "shopping". In case you're wondering, I didn't hire anyone and I didn't watch any porno.

It wan't all sex and drugs though. I visited the Rijksmuseum and saw all the Rembrandt paintings and the Van Gogh Museum, and saw his famous paintings of the sunflowers and the cornfields. There was a special exhibition on while I was there called "Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night", which concerned itself with Van Gogh's paintings of the night and evening, and some of the paintings that inspired him. The centrepiece was the famous "Starry Night" painting which was on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was a very beautiful painting and very large. It also featured a lot of paintings by Monet, Renoir and Gaugain.

It was a very nice place to walk around, Amsterdam, although you really did have to be careful because of the amount of people on bicycles, who were whizzing around all over the place and they have the right of way in Amsterdam. You'd be walking around and hear an angry bell ringing behind you and have to move out of the way very quickly.

I got back yesterday evening. It feels strange to be back. Being in a foreign country where you don't know anyone, and don't have the TV (I didn't watch anything at all while I was away), DVDs, radio, computer or internet, all my regular books and magazines and so on, you do find yourself with a lot of time to think about things. It always feels kind of depressing to be back though, because it's something I'd been really looking forward to and now it's all over.

My legs are absolutely aching now, because I was walking pretty much everywhere in Amsterdam and I'm feeling like I'm kind of running on empty at the moment. I really enjoyed seeing all the paintings in the museums. I used to do a bit of painting myself and I liked it , but I gave it up because I was rubbish at it. The same with a lot of my writing. Then again if I didn't do stuff just because I was rubbish at it I would have spent my entire life sitting on the floor. It's just kind of discouraging when the things that mean a lot to you, you're no good at.