Grandfinal day was upon us. Matt wanted to be settled so he could watch the game on his phone so we headed off at 6am to be settled by the start of the football game.

We had a debacle with the trains heading to the airport. The announcers were only saying notifications in German and everyone didn’t know that the trains were cancelled. Even the staff didn’t know what was going on. We eventually gave up and met an American guy from Texas and we shared a taxi to the airport. We were flying down the autobahn so that was fun bonus.

Both our luggage were overweight and with some quick removal of shoes and clothes into our backpack we were on the right track again. The flight was delayed by almost 30 minutes and I was so happy as Matt got to watch the full grandfinal. What a relief. His team The Eagles won and thank goodness, as the day would have been ruined for him otherwise.

We landed in Amsterdam and met up with Cam at the exit near the shuttle buses. It’s so exciting to be in Europe with him. We took the shuttle bus for our hotel from the airport and when we were checking in, Glen arrived. Glen is my best friends dad who is on a training course in Rotterdam so he got a hotel for the night so he could spend the day with us.

We drove back to Glen’s hotel so he check in and then took a taxi into the city center. We were all ravenous so we stopped off at a small pub for some burgers and booze, the pub building was built in the 1600s. So much history in one little building.

We then headed to look at Anne Franks house but the queue was too long for us and we all didn’t want to wait. We took some pics outside her house and looked up from the street.

Seeing as it was lunch time, we thought we could get two perspectives of the red light district. One during the day and one at night. We spent a couple hours walking the streets and the boys picked up some beers from the supermarket to drink while strolling.

We found a little coffee shop to stop at called The Jolly Joker, which we went to as we had tried a big chain called The Bulldog which is famous for its coffees and other items, but it was so busy and couldn’t even find a seat in the basement. You could get away with not buying anything as the stores are full of smoke anyways.

After walking around a little more we decided to find a canal cruise that night a night cruise. We found one that was leaving at 6:45 so we hopped onto that. While waiting we saw all boats pull up for better prices and included drinks so we were all kicking ourselves. The canal trip was very relaxing and we got to see some beautiful old buildings. The history onboard wasn’t very knowledgeable but it was still fun seeing more of Amsterdam from a different perspective. Cam had an early flight so was up at 3:30am and by then he had a little doze on the boat.

Our appetites were back and decided to find an Argentinian restaurant that we saw that had a special for all you can eat ribs. After the canal cruise the temperate dropped quickly so after feeling the cold and not finding the restaurant fast enough we settled on another Argentinian restaurant for mixed grill and ribs.

It was dark outside so we thought we would attempt Part 2 of the Red Light District at night. It was hectic, if felt like Zimbabwe at Easter and the crowds were everywhere. There were a lot more girls in their windows and the crowds were cheering anytime someone knocked on a door. We had our fill and decided to try the Casa Rosso. It’s a live sex show theatre which Ash had recommended for not being sleazy and didn’t have a lot of crowd participation. We queued for an hour and it definitely was the busiest of all the shows in Amsterdam. We were told by the staff that they were Grade A actors and the others were Grade B. Honestly, I think we had Grade D actors so I’m not sure what the others would have been like. We were so crammed into the theatre and the seats were so tiny the boys legs were up to their necks. They have 8 acts on continual loop. We did our full loop and headed home. Cameron Dale was sleeping in the theatre so we didn’t want the actors to feel bad by staying any longer.

We all shared the taxi home and got home at about 1am. What an experience!! Another few bucket lists have been knocked off.