Amsterdam
What a freakin city! Everyone always says how wild it is, but you can't truly appreciate the madness until you visit. After getting situated at our hostel the first evening, we roamed around town and, of course, found a coffee shop. I tried to tell the guys that marijuana is illegal in most of the U.S. so we shouldn't go in, but they practically dragged me through the door...nothing I could do. If you're a stoner and you haven't been to Amsterdam, that's like being a surfer but only surfing in lakes...enough said.
After dinner we went down to ye old red light district. Everyone says that there's just hot chicks standing in windows with red lights trying to seduce you....low and behold there are just hot chicks standing in windows with red lights trying to seduce you. Who woulda thought? It was rad. They also had some weird fetish sections of the district, though. For example, there was one street where all the rooms had women over 300 pounds in g-strings...so that was cool? Great experience, but no I didn't come back with an STD, sorry mom.
The city itself is pretty cool as well. For the amount of people and buildings there, they do a nice job compacting everything into a small enough area that you can basically walk the whole thing in a day. We took a tour of the Heineken factory, which was probably the coolest factory tour I've been to. They gave us a boat tour through the city after and offered Heinekens for $2.50...I immediately ordered two and everyone else on the boat looked at me like a robbed a homeless child...Stupid Americans I guess.
Overall, a fantastic place to visit. Where else in the world can you drink, play cards, smoke, and eat dinner all at once in a restaurant? Pretty impressive.
Spain
When Mo and I booked a four day trip to Ibiza, we didn't really think that a language difference could be an issue. We found out the hard way as soon as we landed that it was indeed a massive issue. I took two years of Spanish in high-school, but my teacher openly admitted that he only taught it because it gave him a bonus for his soccer coaching salary...needless to say I didn't learn a whole lot. That led me to accidentally speaking French rather than Spanish to the bus driver when we first arrived. Epic fail.
Once we finally got some idea of where to go, it took us about 3 hours to get to our resort (the distance between the airport and resort was roughly 10 miles) and at one point we were waiting at a sketch bus stop in the middle of nowhere with a homeless man. Good memories but definitely don't want to make that journey again.
When we got to the hotel, we immediately realized that almost everyone staying there was over the age of 40 and from mainland Spain. Much like Americans travel to Key West or Hawaii during the winter months, Spaniards travel to Ibiza. Wearing a "Team USA" tanktop and a backwards camouflage Coors Light hat definitely drew some bad attention, but YOLO.
For the next four days, Mo and I drank and ate about as much as possible while only physically moving in order to change locations on the beach. We played the all inclusive card extremely well to say the least. Some great stories and videos were made, including Mo sleeping in the lobby of the hotel rather than the room after trying to steal and 30-pound seashell filled with tips. Next time you see me, ask me to show you the 'cigar' video if you want to see possibly the funniest midnight video ever taken.
On Thursday afternoon, Mo and I took off for the UK. Our flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:05pm and we had booked the last bus of the night into the city at 11:30pm. Of course, RyanAir dropped the ball and got us there at 11:45, putting us in a bit of a pickle. Thankfully there were about 1000 other late passengers trying to get to the city, so we managed to catch a 1:30am bus rather than sleeping in the airport.
As most ignorant Americans would, we didn't plan the route from the city center to our hostel (about 20 miles south of central London). So there we were, standing in the middle of a downtown shitshow at 2:30 in the morning with absolutely no idea where to go. Thankfully, we were able to pull some strings and a nice English lad helped direct us through the un-comprehendible London bus map and get us where we needed to go.
As we got about 5 miles away from our stop, we entered the 'ghetto' of London. As we stopped to pick up a seemingly nice young man, it turned out that he was about 1pound short of the bus fare. While most people would give the guy a break at 4am, the bus driver wasn't having it. They started screaming at each other (the bus driver was Jamaican, the young man was a moderately intoxicated African-American) and finally the driver decided to call the police...all because of 1 pound.
This pissed off some other people on the bus, so all the sudden everyone started screaming at everyone else. Some lady at the back was yelling "Do it for Jesus, have mercy!" while other people were threatening to literally kick the kid off the bus. If you can picture me and Mo, two scrawny white Americans in a city we've never been to, at 4am sitting on a double-decker bus in the ghetto of London with an inter-racial fight surrounding us, you might get a pretty hilariously scary image in your head.
After about 10 minutes things finally calmed down and the man got off so that we were able to get to our stop. I've never been so happy in my life. We saw our hostel started hoofing it to the door. As we approached, I asked Mo one more time to see if he called to make sure that there was 24-hour check in. He said he did. Unfortunately, nobody answered the door and the reception desk was pitch black. The hostel was basically the only residential building in sight, and the only other thing around was a train station. Of course our phones were dead too, so now we were in another dilemma. I was not about to make another bus ride back into central London to find a different hostel, so instead of strangling someone, I basically banged down the door.
As I was gave up and we were walking away, someone finally woke up and let us in. It was legit something out of a Hollywood film. That about ended the problems for the trip, but we were content with not having any more.
London itself is bloody massive! It's very deceiving. We probably walked a good 15-20 miles on Friday checking everything out. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral, the Eye of London, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the Globe Theatre, etc. My mom also informed me that my great grandfather had a statue in by Westminster Abbey and we found him right next to Benjamin Franklin and Winston Churchill.
I thoroughly enjoyed all of the history and scenery of London, but there were just too many people for me to want to live there. It was NY on steroids which is hard to imagine. However, you've got to add it to your bucket list because pictures of Big Ben and all the iconic landmarks don't do them justice. They're mind-blowing in person.
Since then, we've gotten back to school and finished up work for the semester. Classes officially ended on Friday and now we have a week for "studying" and then two weeks of finals. This coming week, I think the guys are gonna play some golf, go fishing, and roam a bit through Ireland. With only a few weeks left, trips are coming to an end but there's a few more in store. Based on my sub-par number of blog posts, this will probably be it until my reminiscent post on the final day of the trip, so thanks to all of you that care enough to keep track of my whereabouts and have read on a consistent basis.
To end, gotta post about them AVS! Nathan MacKinnon is a filthy human being and I'm loving watching all these games online.
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