Continued

Found the Red Light District.

The prostitutes stand behind doors with big glass windows, mostly naked. Usually in bra and panties, but not always that much. If you even glance at them they open the door and start making offers 🙂

Pretty sweet!

Here’s some pictures I snapped today. BTW, you won’t see any pictures from the red light district. I haven’t tried but Jono said they are very, very anti camera there. I don’t want someone to throw my shiny new camara in the canal. You’ll have to be happy with pictures of the diseases I bring home.

I also found the weed district. I was kind of expecting a little less hippy aspect. For some reason I thought it was gonna be like Starbucks with weed; although Starbucks has plenty of hippies. I didn’t expect the tie dye, and silly sayings and all that shit.

One thing that’s interesting is that all the cafes and really everything where you sit down has all their chairs facing out from the place. Towards the street. I guess that’s where all the insanity happens. I’ll find out tonight.

I finally got checked into my hostel about 30 minutes ago. My room wasn’t ready yet so they just stuck me in one that was. I have three roommates, who I have not yet met. All their shit is all over the room though. They’re all female, judging from the backpacks and sandles and entire bathroom of makeup. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to come home and see the old guy snoring away in the top bunk.

There are about 200 open hotspots (holy shit, I just saw the biggest cat in the world walk past out the window) available from my hostel. I’m using one named “Surf Here!” which probably means they are stealing all my passwords as I type. Whatever. It’s the only free WiFi I’ve found *anywhere*, and I looked. Lots of places have Internet access but it’s all their own computers. Can’t upload pics and such from those.

Oh, Jono, they stamped my passport when I left Schipol 🙂

The flight really wasn’t bad at all. In fact I think I’d say I’d rather fly 8 hours than drive 8 hours. I was in a two seat section, so it was either window or aisle. I had aisle but some guy wanted me to swap so he could sit with his friend so I ended up with window. I think if I had had the aisle seat the flight would have been trivial. It would have been nice to get up stretch a few more times than I did (twice) but didn’t wanna disturb my neighbor too often.

I don’t really get the train system; it seems to be honor based. You are supposed to buy a ticket and then when you get on the train you put it in a little machine which stamps it. The thing is I’ve never seen someone actually check a ticket so I’m not sure what compels people to get them stamped (thereby using it and paying for it) except for honesty. I have a 48 hour pass and was told I only need to get it stamped once, which I did. I haven’t taken it out of my wallet since and no one has asked to see it. Maybe I am missing something.

That’s all for now. I’m gonna try to sleep a little and let the sun go down so I can hit the streets tonight. I feel like I know my way around the city now so tomorrow I am going to do the tourist thing. Museums and such. Not sure what I’ll do Monday.