Amsterdam

Apparently, the Queen’s Birthday is the biggest, most celebrated holiday in Amsterdam. Combine with an overnight stay on the Royal Caribbean and you have a recipe for fun. We went off ship as soon as possible and upon entering the canaled city, we were lost in a sea of orange, their national color. So many locals walking about wearing orange, some in costumes (Oompa Loompas, etc).

There were many drunks, we saw several street fights, everything you could imagine for a wild party, except one thing was missing…toilets! Toilets are not very common in Amsterdam; they’re hard to find and when you do you have to pay for them. Ok, ok, so there are public urinals for the men, but these are literally right out in the open, in the middle of a sidewalk intersection sometimes, with no stall doors, only stall walls and people walking by in all directions! How can parts of Europe be so advanced, become so advanced, and somewhere along the way forgot about the necessity of toilets?

Of course, what is fun without some dancing? We returned to the ship in the evening. I watched one and a half of Shannon’s shows then we went back out for some night life. The night life was not as “legendary” compared to the huge masses of people we had seen out partying throughout the day, but we enjoyed walking around, snacking (had a chocolate-covered waffle and some pizza) and people watching. We were sitting down at the pizza place with the “whistling waiter” (he thought he was so funny to whistle after everything he said, but it was only funny the first few times), and watching WWF fake wrestling, wondering how anyone could ever think it to be entertaining, or real. We went back on ship and back to bed. In the morning we got out and about for more sight-seeing and photos, as well as a little shopping. We started with Dutch pancakes=yummy! Then the sights: castles, important historical landmarks, pictures of locals, and Anne Frank’s house. We didn’t do any tours, we preferred to walk around instead. I ended up breaking away from the group in the afternoon to do some of my own wandering. I carefully snuck back unnoticed to one of the famous tulip flower markets and bought Shannon a bouquet of 50 stems to give her on the ship as a thank you. She was very happy with the flowers!