Brussel & Amsterdam (05-08/08/05)

This exciting 4-day trip started off on Friday night at around 820pm by ryanair to an airport in brussel where we had to take an hour bus to the city central. We reached the hotel at around 12am.Yup, I didn’t type it wrongly, we actually slept in a hotel as we booked all our accommodations in brussel and Amsterdam only 1 week before.
Furthermore 90% of the hostel/hotel required a minimum of 2 nights.

Anyway, we felt so nice to stay in a hotel though our pocket was 20% empty at that point.

We left the hotel at around 8am to head to Amsterdam which was a 3 hour journey. We had to leave earlier to Amsterdam to search for accommodation as we could not find any hostel/hotel online for 1 night. It took us the whole morning to search for a LOUSY place to stay for 25 euro – At this point , all of us were 60% poorer as the amount of money to take to Amsterdam cost us around 40 euro.

This place was really lousy – oops, I forgot to mention how many of us went, there were 9 of us- 6 guys 3 gals. We had to sleep on the mattress that filled the small room to the brink. The toilet was so rundown that none of us bathed that except a guy.
There people smoking marijuana downstairs too- doesn’t this sound so creepy?

Anyway, after lunch, we headed to Zaandijk where the windmills were located. There were 3 windmills in this picturesque country side. We were left with only around 20% of the initial amount of money we brought at this point of time!

Windmill
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We took lots of photos before heading to the chess factory where we saw how cheese was made. I bought a cheese sausage for my Italian colleagues before we headed to the windmill. We went into the windmill to visit – it was really a great sight only on the first floor.
There were lots of nice scenery around the area and we really hoped that we could be there for a longer time.
We took photos with miniatures of clog shoes- it is very famous in Amsterdam.
After spending around 3 hours there, we left to head to the city central.

Red light district
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We visited the shopping area and hard rock café before heading to the red light district.
We also shopped around the central area and watched people performing on the streets- there were a group of guys who were performing excellent break dance!

We headed to the red light district where we saw we could see!!! One has to see for oneself what is in it!=D
We left the area at around 12 am to our shabby hostel to knock off!




Heineken brewery
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After having a continental breakfast, we left to this brewery! It was a great experience in this brewery as all the things in it are very interactive. There are 19 sections to this place – each section represents a part of the process to produce this wonderful beer.
We had 3 free drinks and a free gift- one of my friend drank 6 glasses ( less than 0.5l)
and his face was so red at the end of tour. The babes are aplenty here too!
I bought a Heineken blouse! My face was also red at the end of the tour but I drank only 1 glass=D I am a good gal=D

After this visit we went to the sex museum- hmmm, cannot explain too much- visit yourself! Yupz, it is worth paying a visit to this museum.

Brussel
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Back to brussel- another 3 hours ride back from Amsterdam. We checked into the hostel before walking around brussel. There are chocolates everywhere and we shopped again until we were broke. Some of us only left 10 euro …we were 90% broke.

Brugge
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We left to brugge on Monday – another 1 hour train trip. It is a very nice place and full of chocs again! => visit and u will know how nice it is=D

Mini Europe
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Fantastic place to visit- miniatures of important landmarks of Europe countries are all in it. It is really an eye-opener => no words can describe how fun it is to feel like the master of EU countries!

Milan
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Finally, everything has to come to an end. Back to work and work. The whole trip was fun though all of us were broke. We never felt this poor before during the trip.