I don't know if I've told you this already, but Amsterdam has a FANTASTIC public transport system. They have tap to scan subway cards (made of paper too!), a monitor with the list of stops on all their buses and trolleys, and they have BEAUTIFUL train stations. I got a few very pretty shots of their main hub, Central Station. Take a look.
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| It's like you're my mirror (woah), my mirror starin back at me... |
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| Megan was quite impressed by the size of this woman. |
Today was the first time we visited the station since we had to take the ferry today. Most other times, we just took the bus or the trolley, but today, we decided to be adventurous. We completely ignored my mom's pleas that "there were sharks in the water" and that "she gets seasick really easily" and that "there are still bloodstains on that boat" and hopped on to the fairy to this place.
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| The world's shittiest prosthetic eye. |
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| ...Yet you can still see that Joby likes it. Hehhehehehhehehe.... |
This is the Eye. And despite looking nothing like an eyeball, it's very appropriately named because it also goes by another name: The Netherlands National Museum of Film.
There were a few cool exhibits. I think my favorite was this Splatoon Simulator on the wall.
There was also this cool room that had a 360 degree view of each individual frame in a film reel. It reminded me of that room in the second Matrix movie where Neo talked to Colonel Sanders.
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| My father, however, is neither of those people. |
We happened to be there at the perfect time though, since right before we were about to leave, a Dutch filmmaker named Johannes Guille approached us. He said he needed Asian extras for a few short films he was filming later that day and wanted us to be in it and we FLIPPED. So here's the films we were in:
Later, we went to Dam Square. We weren't exactly sure what was here, but it was on our "must see locations" list on the free map we got at the airport, so it must be worth it, right?
Yeah it was basically a tourist trap. But it was a funny tourist trap. Their gift shops here had some very interesting items for sale.
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| Those actually aren't salt and pepper shakers, they're the severed penises of people with kidney stones. |
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| Someone call Nevin! |
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| "Oh, so that's why the maid did that when I rang the service bell..." |
Even their sudoku games were inappropriate.
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| 128 paginas. Maybe more. |
They had some really funny street performers doing some breakdancing/stunting on the middle of the street. We caught them towards the end of their grand finale, where they were gonna do a flip over four strangers, so I only have a little footage of them, unfortunately.
Actually, I lied, They weren't gonna flip over four strangers. They flipped over three strangers, randomly picked from the crowd of people watching them, and then they picked ME. And when they picked me, they got a pretty big laugh out of the crowd because they said they would be searching for the "strongest man in the crowd" and they said "Give it up for Jackie Chan!" when I walked into the circle.
My mom said she got some footage of them flipping over me, but when I checked her phone, I found out she was on TIME LAPSE MODE. So the entire 4 minute buildup the street performers gave ended up being condensed into 15 seconds of a suuuuper fast flipbook. Sorry guys :(
They were REALLY funny people. They had a bunch of synchronized shouts whenever people donated and whenever they emphasized the "danger" of the stunt they were performing. And they hit on girls FREQUENTLY, it was really funny.
Okay, HIGHLIGHT OF TODAY. We took a COUNTRYSIDE TOUR.
First place we went to were the DUTCH WINDMILLS
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| This view really blew me away AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHA. |
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| And yes, we got to climb the windmill. |
They originally constructed the windmills to drain the water in the Netherlands, but they were made obsolete when they built steam-powered pumps. So now, a lot of them just make peanut oil. And they make it by grinding up peanuts with these big ol' grinding stones.
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| The painted thing on the right, I mean. Not the guy with the GoPro. He doesn't lift. |
The view from the top was also very cool.
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| Magnificent. |
The only downside was that it smelled like animal poop everywhere, but honestly with how beautiful those windmills were, I think it's worth making some of my other less important senses suffer.
Next up, the tour took us to a really cute fishing village. They had a cheese factory and it smelled AMAZING in there. And they had stacks of cheese wheels on a bunch of shelves that look like they were straight out of Mickey Mouse's wet dreams.
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| This wheel was not real. |
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| But these were. And they smelled amazing. |
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| Stacks on stacks. |
After a little presentation about how the cheese was made, they let us sample all of their cheeses and they were DELICIOUS. Some of them tasted like the traditional cheeses that we Americans like on our spaghetti and our burgers. But other ones had a really unique taste to them. One of them had herbs in it that made it taste "taco-like" (that's my best description for the taste, because it honestly tasted like a taco), one of them was a year old and tasted SUUUPER strong, but my favorite was this white cheese (I think it's called gouta but I'm not sure) that kind of melts in your mouth with a savory, flavorful taste. It's hard to describe because I've never had anything like it, but it was so good that we bought a tiny little wheel of it to take home to America.
Afterwards, we had a LOT of time to eat and look around the fishing village. I discovered a very cute pastry shop that was selling traditional Dutch pancakes, so I gave it a shot.
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| Yumyumyumyumyumyum! |
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| Delicioso! |
Here's some other pretty shots of the fishing village I got.
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| Which one's the real Michael??? |
Then, we took a ferry across the bay to a place where they made CLOGS. Clogs as in the Dutch shoes, not the things that happen when the ball of hair in my shower falls down the drain.
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| They also had a cute little sign. |
We didn't buy any wooden shoes, but we did see how they're made. And they make a LOT of them.
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| Shoes. |
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| Oh my god. |
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| Joby is clogging the clogs! |
They're not particularly comfortable, but damn are they stylish.
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| With these shoes, I shall make my way downtown. |
After the tour, we ended the day with a little visit to the red light district.
And Megan was with us. When did I realize this was a bad idea? Right around the time we walked through the first hallway.
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| "So... they don't call it the red light district just because of their bulbs..?" |
See those red lights right over there? Yeah. That's a peepshow area. And while we didn't see any nudity (thank GOD), we did see women in their underwear tapping at the glass to try and get the attention of passerbys. And they FREAKED Megan out because they weren't just tapping. They were slamming their hands against the glass.
Yeah, we turned around and left after that. With a last name like Evangelista, it's kinda implied that we won't be living that sort of life anytime soon.
RFotD: Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, the internet in Germany was too slow for me to post anything, but I have a BUNCH of entries coming your way!
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