Amsterdam tours: Day 1 - The red lights of Amsterdam

Friday night has arrived again. I'm not long back from London, but we have the task of showing the Moldovian Girl around Amsterdam.

Purely for the ease of mutual transport connections we meet at RembrandtPlein. From here we can head to the Centre and bypass some of the prettier views, such as the Amstel:



From here, we head along through the canals towards the Red Light District. We stop for a refreshing beer at Susie's Saloon:



I should have known we'd be back here.....

We have one slow beer and get a good chin wag - get to know each other. Moldova has good theoretical english, but she is a little under practiced. This raises a few laughs, as she points out the ridiculous way that Scots and Kiwi's pronounce certain words. This gives us some good running jokes for the weekend.

I've heard this before. Scots roll their r's, so "Girl" becomes "Gurrl" or something like that. Moldova starts out quite quiet and timid, but soon she is taking the piss out of me for this like one of the lads. The equivalent's in kiwi speak(Apart from the obvious use of "Bro" instead of full stops):

Pen= Payen
Expensive = Expaynsive
Never = Nayver

Hence the running joke sentance "I have nayver bought an expaynsive payen"

We head from here to the Red Light District. Moldova is keen to see it as one of the sights of Amsterdam. We do the standard tour which I've done so many times, and generallly have good long walk and talk as we marvel at the lights and shops and play the "Spot which one used to be a man" game:



We eventually find ourselves on the Damrak, and for want of something better to do. We head for the Gollem. We felt it was a good way to introduce Moldova to Amsterdam bar life. On the way we manage to find the bar that the Kiwi girl works in(I think it may be a bar that you can only find - not go to), so we stop in for a Tequilla slammer. This is apparently closer to what they would drink in Moldova, but the bar is busy, and we aren't all moldovian, so we head for something we're a little more used to.

When we get to the Gollem, we meet a Bulgarian friend that Moldova knows, so we all feel quite at home. We sample a few beers by recomendation of the Bulgarian, and have some good conversations. Eventually, it's time for bed, so we head off and agree to continue the conversations at another time over another beer.