Fri 4 Jan 2002
Sleep in. Wash some clothes. Lunch at the pub with Oliver. Museum of London. Sally cooked some yummy duck for dinner.
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Sleep in. Wash some clothes. Lunch at the pub with Oliver. Museum of London. Sally cooked some yummy duck for dinner.
Didn't get to Big Ben as I slept in. National Gallery (Sainsbury Wing: 1200-1500). Can't visit London without seeing a show in the West End. First two rows at Rent go on sale at 5pm the night of the show for only £12.50. Twas good.
Visited some pubs with Olly, Sally, Sven and Jo.
Apologies for the lack of photos and brief entries recently. In the first case, I'm out of web space on this site and haven't gotten around to clearing much more, and in the second I'm just getting lazy I guess.
And now we reach the point at which I have no more diary. Internet access was expensive in Amsterdam, and not present at all in Poiana Brasov. I still have the photos of course, and will provide what commentary I can.
We caught a train into Amsterdam from the airport, and found an enterprising chap standing at the train station looking for likely looking backpackers. He ran a youth hostel, but also had a few individual apartments to rent around the city. The idea of a place to ourselves, with our own kitchen, seemed nice, and the price didn't seem too horrific, so thus we found somewhere to stay right in the heart of Amsterdam.
We went on a canal cruise today. Though quite touristy, there were many interesting sites to see. There was a voiceover in Dutch, French, German and English. I found myself trying to work out what was being said in the other languages before they got around to English. Not with a lot of success, but sometimes I got the gist of it.
Amsterdam is (in)famous for it's red light district and stance on drugs. The overtness of both was a little startling. The atmosphere could be pretty seedy, but nonetheless it felt remarkably safe.
We caught the train to Rotterdam to see the bass clarinet Katie is buying. Unfortunately we were not able to get enough Euros out of the bank to buy it whilst we were here, but it eventually arrived safely in Australia. I found the scenery on the journey very pretty, but had left my camera in the apartment.
I would have liked to go for a bike ride or walk, but the weather was pretty nasty. I found a visit to the Van Gogh museum a very enjoyable alternative.