Amsterdam Part Deux

Our second trip to Amsterdam in the last six months was even better than the first. As well as being my first time there during the summer it was also my friends, Yasmin and Adam's, joint Hen and Stag do, or 'HAG do' as I like to call it.

The hotel was a huge improvement on the last one simply because there was room to move around without having to climb on the bed or wait til the other person passes. It could have done without the clogs or coos on the walls though!



We spent most of our time watching the world go by, giggling like schoolgirls, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice and wandering around the canals feeling jealous of anyone in a boat.

Saturday night was spent at Club 11, a bar/club/restaurant situated on the 11th floor of a dis-used postal building, which you have to enter by a lift complete with grafitti and ghetto blaster. I think it's the only club I've been to with windows (the only one I remember anyway) which meant we had great nights views across the city and an extremely early glimmer of sunrise towards the end of the night. Gorgeous.



Sunday was supposed to be sports day for the Hag do but the blistering heat combined with varying degrees of hangovers put paid to that. Instead we decided to laugh at Yas in her Hen gear and 'interesting' articles in the Candian Cosmo (apparently women are worse drivers than men because they are 'foolish' and 'apply make up'!!!) and just generally laze about... Can anyone spot a theme here?

All in all it was a relaxing weekend which is lucky because I have a presentation in front of the examination board on Monday for uni and need to have my wits about me.

Fogbathing, Beer Pong and an International Ceilidh

Yesterday (Tues 14th) I decided to head to the beach as it was sunny and apparently has great views of Golden Gate bridge which I would have enjoyed if not for the fog. I set off mid-morning and after an hour and a half of walking and bussing it through different areas and parks I made it to Baker Beach just in time for the fog. And when I say fog I mean the thickest, bleakest, chilliest fog you can imagine. I sat on the beach for about 30 minutes with my beach towel wrapped around me before I'd had enough and got the bus back into the city. I actually managed to get a great shot of the bridge shrouded in fog and discovered Presidio, a former Spanish military out-posting upon which San Francisco was founded, so not a total waste of time.

The rest of the afternoon was spent hunting for internet cafes and was so tediously boring I won't waste your time with details.

For dinner, I went to House of Nanking, a highly recommended Chinese restaurant just round the corner on Kearny St. Every night without fail this place has people queueing outside it despite the fact it's in Chinatown and surrounded by other restaurants. There was no menu in the window so I was slightly apprehensive about range of choice and costs but I needn't have worried. I ordered salt and pepper shrimp and mushrooms and it was the freshest, tastiest Chinese meal I've ever had and not even a trace of Monosodium Glutamate. That plus a glass of wine came to less than $15 (8quid!). It's not the sort of place you'd go to for a leisurely or romantic dinner, you sit wherever there's space, order quickly and don't hang around after all there's another queue of people waiting but it was worth it.

Beer Pong was next on my agenda, well it wasn't actually part of the plan but somehow I ended up playing. The plan was to go into the ballroom (the hostel's multi-purpose lounge/bar area), watch a few games and get chatting to some people. Before I knew it I was being accosted by Maura, an Irish girl looking for a team-mate, and playing against Nat and Josh in the first round.

Beer Pong is a simple game. Each pair has a set of 6 half filled beer glasses arranged in a triangle in front of them. The object of the game is to throw a ping pong ball into your opponent's glasses to knock them out. The first team to eliminate all their opponent's glasses wins. Of course, each time someone lands a ball in your pint you have to drink it.

Maura and I turned out to be surprisingly good and equally competitive so we made a great team. We beat Nat and Josh in the first round and went on to play 2 English girls who were taking the whole thing very seriously and got very annoyed with themselves when they lost. It was during this round that Team Celtic was developed. Maura is travelling with 4 friends so they were the founding members then we had Clare (roommate from Edinburgh), Paul (random English guy travelling alone) and a Korean couple who seemed totally bemused by what was going on. Team Celtic was responsible for leading the Mexican wave anytime we scored and chants of "There's only one Team Celtic!" as well as general ooh-ing and ah-ing at any near misses.

After totally trouncing the English girls we were in the semi-final against 2 American guys, 1 of whom was an obnoxious git. It was a close-run game in spite of his 'tactics'. Apparently the only way to win is to distract your opponents and wave your arms around. Team Celtic was not impressed by this guy's antics and neither was the rest of the bar who quickly joined Team Celtic. By this point we had about 40 people all Mexican-waving and cheering us on.

Unfortunately they cheated and won and that was the end of Team Celtic's Beer Pong championship dreams. The obnoxious git was in the final against Adam (Australian guy with bleached blonde hair) and a French guy whose name I don't know. Team Celtic got behind Adam and the French guy and made them honorary Celts for the purposes of cheering. Obnoxious git and his teammate were being annihilated and were losing 5-1 when Adam threw and Obnoxious guy blocked the shot. This should have been and instant disqualification but Adam decided to take the shot again and win in style. He sunk it straightaway and Team Celtic went wild. The prize for the Beer Pong tournament is a free night's stay at the hostel and a case of beer. If I'd known that at the start I'd have tried harder!

For anyone else this would have been enough excitement for one evening but not for Team Celtic. Someone had arranged for an Irish band to play after the tournament with the aim of holding a ceilidh but nobody had checked whether or not anyone knew any dances. After about half an hour of people jumping around aimlessly I stepped in and put on my Miss Bossyboots t-shirt. Pretty soon we had an International Gay Gordons underway with mixed success. Some people were great and got it straightaway but most were awful and we had a few near misses with dislocated shoulders on the switch turn. Fearing the someone would end up in hospital I set up Strip the Willow.

The last time I Stripped the Willow was at Yvonne and Iain's wedding and I ended up in the drum kit in some sort of matrix move, a move that I wasn't keen of repeating especially as there was no drum kit to save me this time!

It went surprisingly well and assisted by Clare we managed to get most people going in the right direction. No small feat when the majority don't speak English and I'm shouting at them in my teacher voice. With each round the set got smaller (lightweights) and we also seemed to end up with people switching sides and unequal numbers on each side but we made it through. What I didn't realise though was that when the band walked down the middle of the set they were trying to signal the end but as they kept playing we kept dancing. It was only afterwards that one of the band members told me they'd been playing that tune for over half an hour. Oops!

All in all not a bad night and plenty to chat about this morning at breakfast. Oh, and no-one fell over but I do have an impressive bruise on the inside of my arm.

P** B*** and Pushy Pests (*edited at Mum's request)

P** B*** works. Especially when used in conjunction with I****** tablets. I know a lot of you may think this is overkill but I have always been desperate for a tan. Growing up as the 'white chicken' of the family is no fun, surrounded by dark haired people who tan easily and don't have to deal with comments like, "I thought you were on holiday? Was it not sunny?" was rubbish. But lately, since my 3 weeks in India, I've been tanning more and with my new found lotion and potion I'm actually going properly brown. Not just my usual freckly and golden but properly brown. People who don't know me are even commenting on my nice tan which is a first. All my hard work lying on the beach for hours every day has been worth it especially since I've had to deal with the aforementioned pushy pests.

American men are forward, desperate, pushy and don't take no for an answer. Last night I was meeting Mindy at the North Avenue Beach House to reshoot some material when I was approached by some random asking if he could borrow my cell phone. Taken by surprise I agreed (yeah, I know it's unlike me) and he made a call looking for his brother who didn't answer. It was only later I realised this was a crafty way of getting my number without directly asking for it. He spent the next 20 minutes (my cycling is getting faster so I was early) talking about how he was just back from Czechoslovakia (doubt he can even spell it) and how different it was to America. Duh! At one point he even said how weird it was that black people and Asian people spoke Czechoslovakian! Oh my God! Really?!? You mean they speak the language of the country they're from?!?! Wow!

After him rambling on about this and me checking my watch every 5 seconds waiting for Mindy he pops the question: Did I want to go for a drink. Sorry, no. Why not? Well, I'm meeting my friend tonight, I have a boyfriend and I'm just not interested in ignorant midgets who think America is the centre of the universe (ok, the last one I just said in my head). Another 10 minutes he stood asking the same question. Take the hint mate, NO.

Then again at the beach today, 2 young guys set out their towels and CD player (Maroon 5!) quite near me before one of them comes over with a piece of paper with both their numbers on it for me to choose which one I wanted to go out with. I didn't even take the piece of paper and they still spent the next 10 minutes saying where each of them would take me for a date. I was looking for Cilla and our Graham with the round up.

I'm enjoying being here, I know just enough people to hang about with and still have my moments of anonymity but the pushy pests are getting on my nerves. I can't imagine this unrelenting technique of chatting someone up would ever actually work but it seems to be the main method here. Very strange.