Spring Break, Part III

After London comes Amsterdam! We probably got high just from standing in our hotel lobby to check in. No doubt at all why everyone was there - except one unfortunate soul who had interviews and drug tests to look forward to when he got back. We were sharing our room with 6 strangers. The first night was uneventful - we walked around, got dinner, and watched the soccer game, and went home and went to bed early. I didn't want to, and wished we'd gone out instead. So I was up most of the night bored and unable to sleep, right? Well, actually, I passed out immediately and slept all night. Everyone else was up for hours do to snoring, roommates making noise, and someone smoking. Me? I had a lovely night. And then came morning.

In the morning, I woke up early and thought about getting up, showered, and dressed early. I rolled over, and was confronted with the naked ass of someone I began to think of as "Naked Ass Guy." Not wanting to get any closer to his naked ass, I stayed in my bed, slept more, and periodically turned over, hoping it would be gone. It never was. Finally, I decided I was tired of being held hostage by some guy's naked ass, and I got up. But I think first he may have put his tighty-whities back on. I tried to avoid looking. Some time later, Naked Ass Guy got up (now in underwear), stretched, and turned around, and...wait a minute! This isn't Naked Ass Guy. This is Naked Ass MAN. Naked Ass 40-year-old man. (FYI, while I refer to him as Naked Ass Man, because I saw his Naked Ass, there are even more unfortunate people who refer to him by more graphic names, reflecting their even more unfortunate viewpoints.) Naked Ass Man began trying to be friendly asking us questions about where we were from and finally telling Amanda that "There's history, there's herstory, and then there's ourstory."

We were relieved to discover that Naked Ass Man and his thankfully clothed wife (wife?) were moving to a different room that morning. That day, we got lunch at a very nice little restaurant, and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which I liked much more than I'd expected I would. I don't like having to interpret paintings. I prefer being told what the painter was thinking, and luckily, Van Gogh told his brother, in writing, everything he was thinking.

After Van Gogh, we went to the other end of the culture spectrum and visited the Heineken Exprience. A 10 Euro entrance fee gets you 3 "free" beers and the entire museum - which is actually very cool. There were even games. And a bust of Louis Pasteur:

Here are Andy and Amanda pretending to be Heineken DJs:

We got hamburgers for dinner and then and spent the night - the entire night - hanging out in the bar in our hostel. Each of us, all in our own way, fell in love with the bartender, named Zeppie (we think.) After a night of reggae music, the DJ left and she turned on iTunes and played anything American that she had - and some Dutch hip hop. We met a kid from VA Tech, and several British boys took pictures with us, and were our friends for about 8 minutes, until the British girls they had been talking to got back, at which point they dropped us. Amanda did make one of them "save the Queen," though, when she dropped 2 pence in his beer.

We also saw Naked Ass Man, who was all by himself, dancing with his eyes closed and his arms flailing, in a bar where no one else was dancing. We happened to be talking just then to the boys who had moved into his bed, and told them not to worry; it was good that they brought their own sheets, but they probably didn't want us to tell them what he'd been doing in their bed last night. I think they may have gained some insight, though, from our constant references to him as "Naked Ass Man" and "Ball Sac Man."

We were at the bar until 4 am, and in the end April and I played pool against VA Tech guy and some girl who was really good, which put us at a disadvantage because. . . we don't actually know how to play pool. I managed to sink the 8 ball 3 times in 1 game (that's not good, fyi - it's also actually impossible).