Canal Tour with the Lads-Day 60-March 10th, 2018

Today started a little rougher than I would have liked, as I was decently hung over. This is a pretty rare occasion for me, but we were in no rush to start the day so it was okay. We all lounged around for a bit and took turns taking showers. If you have seen season 2 of Orange is the New Black , you might have seen our airbnb bathroom from some scenes in the show.

I did not have flip flops, so standing barefoot in the bathroom was really gross. My favorite part was that your foot stuck to the ground. I usually don’t mind gross bathrooms after working at a Boy Scout camp, but at least I know those ones were cleaned regularly.

Around noon, we were all ready to get up and seize the day, and headed out for breakfast. We returned out bikes on the way there since the rental period was ending. The place we ate was phenomenal and I would definitely recommend it to anyone travelling in Amsterdam. It was called The Breakfast Club and had really nice food and was definitely very “instagrammable”. When I say this I mean that the food was plated very well and was aesthetically pleasing.

Here’s a hot chocolate I got and my pancakes. Both were delicious.

 

While we were walking around afterwards, I randomly jumped a fence to take pictures with a cannon and they came out pretty nice.

Me and my cannon

Our only other destination for the day was to take a canal tour. We really took our time getting there and spent a couple hours just exploring the city, sitting at cafes and stopping in stores. It was much more relaxing way of seeing the city rather than trying to do as much as possible. We were also staying in a different area of the city than I was in last time, so everything felt new for the most part.

One of my highlights of the day was when we just sat in a café and did some people watching for a solid hour. I am close enough with these friends that sometimes sitting around doing nothing is more fun than anything else.

Later in the afternoon, we went on our boat tour. It was a little chillier on the water, but they had blankets and heated seats. There was a group of “Manchester Lads” on out tour that was equally hilarious and obnoxious. I felt a little bad for the waitress/guide, but they were being really rowdy and had funny banter. We talked to them a bit, but Julien got mad when they called Brussels “a shithole”. They definitely added an element to the tour. For example, a bird pooped on the face of one of them and they would not stop roasting the guy.

We got to see a lot of the city on the tour and I soaked in the incredible views while drinking my very Dutch Heineken.

Here are some pictures from the boat tour:

A selfie of me and “Crazy Jack’s clock tower”

 

Jared, Megan, and Mats on the boat.

 

Our guide claimed you could see seven bridges from here, I was a little skeptical.

 

Pretty houses on the water pt. 1

 

Pt. 2

 

Towards the end of the tour, we were getting hungry and made plans for dinner. We went on yelp and found some nice Italian restaurant called Italia Oggi. It was conveniently close to our apartment as well. We headed over there after finishing the canal tour.

The restaurant was great and very reasonably priced. I got a tagliatelle carbonara that was amazing. If you can’t tell, I am in a pasta carbonara phase of my life right now.

Here’s a pic of my pasta.

 

It was really nice to have one last meal with all my friends, especially since I wouldn’t see most of them for at least six months.

After dinner we wanted to have a relaxing night in since we all had flights tomorrow. We opted to just hang out at the apartment.

We didn’t do anything particularly crazy, but it still ended up being a fun time. In fact, we kept trying to play the game telephone for a bit which proved to be hilarious. The phrase really doesn’t change when you have five people, so we kept coming up with really long and stupid ones.

When it was time for bed, the grossness of the apartment really hit us hard again. Not being intoxicated made me realize how dirty the couch was that I was sleeping on. It had a weird odor and luster that made me believe it has been puked on before. I tried to make the situation better by putting 5 or 6 random pillowcases I found to cover parts of the couch. The couch was very uncomfortable and gross, but I somehow managed.

I had to get up much earlier than my friends, so I said goodbye to them before we went to bed. It had been a fantastic time in Amsterdam with them, and I am very grateful they made the trip out to Europe for spring break.