Amsterdam and Brussels

Amsterdam centre is a dump. It literally stinks of weed and piss. Although, the piss smell is due to public urinals which are boss, but could be massively improved by using a solar powered pump to push canal up to drain the piss into the drains, instead of just leaving the piss smell everywhere. Or is that too much to ask? For a place not to smell like piss.

I get it, weed is legal there. But it stinks.

There is trash literally everywhere in the centre of Amsterdam, because drunk, horny, stoned men and groups of girls just drop it wherever they want. Fuck it, it's somebody else's problem now.

Littering and bad smells are a massive thing for me, so you can get why I don't like Amsterdam.

Dutch people are boss. Straight forward, blunt, funny. I always get on very well with the Dutch.

We did visit Keukenhof, which looked nice online, but it was pretty shit when we got there. Massive disappointment. I'd potentially even go as far as calling it a scam. The photos shows vast fields of coloured tulips. But it's just a normal botanic garden with small patches of tulips. They're nice to look at and smell good. However, people go for these fields, which you cannot access because they're on the other side of a canal. You can pay extra to get on a small boat and sail through this canal, still not really being able to see the fields, BUT, there's like 3 small boats, so if you don't book it when you arrive at like 9am, you've got absolutely no chance.

Anyway we walked around the Red Light District to see what was going on, as when I visited, it was on a day trip from Newcastle on a ferry (we slept on the ferry both ways - video on YouTube), so I only saw daytime prozzies. I have no idea how much it costs to go in, but I'd rather shit in my hands and clap than pay for sex. I'm not really bothered if you pay for it, or get paid for it - your choice, go for it, stay safe.

We noticed that lots of families were walking around looking at the girls in the windows which is very fucking strange, right? Tony children of all ages leering at half naked women in windows waiting for horny tourists to give them 2 minutes of disappointment.

Brussels

Brussels was my first ever solo trip, over 6 years ago. I chose a country where I could speak the language and decided to stay in a hostel to save money. It was one of the ones with loads of beds - never again. It is not worth the money saved to sleep in a room full of people snoring and turning the light on for some reason at 4am and shit like that.

I actually went out during the day, met someone cool, got drunk and ended up climbing into the bunk at like 5am, to be woken up by a Chinese guy brushing his teeth with his electric toothbrush literally next to my head before 6am - full lights on.

So I just got up and went out again, hungover and tired.

Apart from the sleeping thing, I enjoyed Brussels - it gets a lot of shit for some reason, but it's not a bad city. Much cleaner and calmer than Amsterdam.

Tanya had some Easter stuff to do with Ukrainians there, and I met the king of a country that doesn't exist yet. We'd been wanting to meet for years and finally did in Brussels.

I'd return to both countries, but not their capitals again. I've been to Eindhoven before which was possibly the most boring city on the planet, so maybe I'll try Rotterdam next. Maybe Bruges in Belgium.