Amsterdam day two: AMSTERDAM

Hello!

I know, I'm really bad at this but after this post there's only going to be one left.  I just have a busy time of college and work and it's kinda exhausting..

ANYWAY.

We woke up at about 7.30 in order to begin getting ready. I had already decided that I was going to go for something a bit more dressy rather than just my normal casual. I was my first time abroad since I was 10 (i'm 21) so it was a HUGE deal to me!

It didnt take me all that long to get ready, and it didn't take long for Caitlin either and before you knew it, we were out on the deck watching the ship dock, and I freaked out because I got to see a lighthouse.

Yes, I am serious.

We all went up to deck 8 because we were expecting to meet our lecturers - as per itinerary which we weren't sure was in UK or AMS time...  (it was in UK time, not AMS btw) and then wandered about for an hour before our lecturers appeared and laughed at us.

They then proceeded to take a picture of us all, and one of the lecturers came up to me later and said 'I didn't recognise you! i thought you were some random person joining in the picture'

Yup.  Totally. And one of the girls in my class asked if I had died my hair. I was wearing a wig...

SO the ship had docked and now it was time to go through security.

There were signs everywhere saying you needed your passport and boarding card, but in reality we just needed our passports, and I was internally panicking because.. Well, I was wearing a wig!

Luckily all was fine and we boarded the next part in our journey - a coach which transferred us to the city centre.

 Again I sat next to Tanya, and I took pictures along the way

a double decker train...?!

In no time at all we were in the city and... Wow.

My first thought was "there are so many bikes"

My second thought was "there are so many trams"

My third thought was "there is so much canal"

Our meeting point was the Victoria hotel, because we only got 5 hours to spend :(

The fun part at this point was "which tram are we to get in order to get to the Dungeons?"

Eventually we got one and it was literally only like a 5 minute walk.

When we got in, we got our tickets which were actually a combo ticket we'd bought the week before for the Dungeons as well as the canal cruise, which we were looking forward to!

Anyway, we were in the 'Dungeon' (the waiting room before the tour) for about 10 minutes, and honestly I was starting to get a bit bored of the repeating projection... But presumably they were waiting on English speaking actors, which is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I wish I wasn't so reliant on my mother tongue and I wish I was multilingual...

I'm not going to say too much on the Dungeons because SPOILERS but I will say a few words:

WITCH, WITCH, WITCH

poo girl

Roberrrrrrr

"We'll ship you off somewhere truely horrible... LIKE SCOTLAND."

The Dungeons were great, you should totally go. The Edinburgh Dungeons are also pretty great, and my friend and I are going to London in august (oh, really Gail!?) and we're planning to go to the London Dungeons. Gotta visit 'em all!

When we came out, we went to the gift shop (the shop assistant told me that I looked really nice and it made me so happy because I was so nervous haha)

We walked through Dam square and I took only one picture of it:

We were all really hungry so we started walking up the street back to where we were (we pretty much spent our whole time on this street, which is a shame) and we ended up splitting in two groups and going to McDonalds and KFC which yeah, is terrible because we're in the beautiful Netherlands but we only had a few hours to spend. If i go back I'll definitely try some local delicacies :)

After lunch, we continued on our route and kept popping into several souvenir shops, I was quite poor at actually buying gifts because, well, not a lot of things I could bring back and/or were appropriate, but in the end H got a postcard for hannah (from the Dungeons though), a musical gift bag: one for mum and one for Nicola, and a 'clog' shoe brush for my brother as well as a few pieces for my friends and chocolate for work.

We also found a souvenir penny machine so I took a few pictures of Ashley using it

And I saw this window display

I also found this sign really funny

Side note: we had been warned that amsterdam would be freezing cold, colder than we're used to in Scotland because of the lack of mountains... But everyone else was in jackets and we, the scottish tourists, were the only ones without.

And my friends spotted the clogs and because it was the same colour as my dress, encouraged me to get a picture in them,

You don't have to ask me twice

In no time we had around an hour left in the city so we just hung around for a bit and took pictures.  We didn't have time for our canal cruise.

 As well as encouraging friends to take my picture

I really loved this outfit. I did try to find a smaller petticoat in a few Glasgow shops but they looked really tacky so I didn't get any.

wig: Lockshop
dress: Bodyline
petticoat: Lightinthebox

I really loved this outfit.  I also have a matching parasol but I knew there was no point in bringing it with me because the weather was going to be terrible.

Not long afterwards and we were back on the coach taking us to the ship, we were back in security showing our boarding pass and passport and then eventually back in our cabins.

Stay tuned for the final part in my journey which will contain appreciation of life, costa, and DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA.

Until next time, be excellent to each other.

previously:
Amsterdam day one: the coach
Amsterdam day one: the crossing