Let's play "spot the tourist" in Amsterdam

Today was the day for doing stuff. At least that's what Emile and I had boastingly proposed the night before. 1am and we were still listening to Mikey Havoc on bfm and typing emails. Not surprisingly we got at the train station around 11am for the mission to Utrecht. Xavier said we had to visit this student town, for both types of scenery. He wasn't kidding on both fronts.

We got the stoptrain (as opposed to the sneltrain). We tried to figure out the difference, and one would think that one goes faster than the other, but we still weren't able to figure out what it meant at the end of the day since they both went at the same speed.

When we got off after an hour train journey, the Utrecht central station was one big shopping mall. Meandering through the town was a great experience. Most of the cities in Holland are built around waterways, and this is no exception. Along the waterways below the streets, there are also footpaths just above the water. Shops open on to the footpath and recede back under the road (if you can visualise that). The netherlands' biggest steeple is in Utrecht, but was hard to get any happpy snaps of the church - not very photogenic (it wasn't smiling, and neither was the dude hanging on the crucifix).

We managed to see most of the city in four hours of walking around with a convincing poker face that we knew where we were going. Sitting in the sun on the side of a canal drinking a Hoegaarden was very refreshing. Might as well enjoy the summer while it lasts.

I headed back to Xavier's place and said see-ooo to him and jumped on the train to Amsterdam. Having a 70 litre pack on my back packed completely full and a 30 litre day pack on the front felt pretty sore once I was well in to the swing of wandering around Amsterdam looking for my hostel. Now I know what I would have felt like if I had joined the army and done basic.

The city has very nice architecture - lots of old stuff similar to Utrecht, but also lots of new stuff like Rotterdam. Unfortunately more tourists than both those cities combined. It didn't take long to spot them, or rather smell them. They all seem to travel/hunt in packs with number 2 haircuts and polo shirts while giving each other dead arms. After devouring some peas, pies and pud at the local Western pub, they'll head for desert to the red light district and have a feed of one of the locals behind the shop windows.

I've got a good list so far of the non-touristy areas, so hopefully I won't pollute the nice places tomorrow with my smell or foreign demeanour.

Before I finish, I'll comment on the Dutch here. They seem really nice; their english is generally good and they spend time enjoying life. It's a nice way to be, in my opinion. This is a general theme with Europeans I've found, however. If I could suggest one thing to them, and that's to change their train ticket machines so you can use paper money as well as coins. I'm a bit tired of paying 50 eurocents for a manual ticket purchase transaction. They also like dining late, which works well for me. There are plenty of restaurants happy to relieve me of my cash for dinner after 10pm.