"This cheese shop really smells like...cheese."

Amsterdam, man, Amsterdam.
Talk about the epitome of a hot-mess traveling extravaganza.

We leave after all of our classes are finished on Friday afternoon and are all proud of our light packing.
After successfully getting to the airport, and checking we venture to the always-nerve-wracking-even-though-I'm-not-packing-weapons-or-drugs security line.
My half full facewash in a container that was only slightly over 100ml was confiscated by the security woman who had just spent a good three and a half minutes flirting with the men going through security in front of me.
She was, pardon my french, the crankiest bitch I have ever encountered in an airport.
[yes, mother. I should have known better than to fly with a container that large. and point of interest for anyone possibly, maybe considering sending your favorite blogger a package, my face really enjoys being cleansed with Mary Kay facewash. and I personally enjoy little frivolous candies and other expressions of your love. worried that you can't send anything because you don't have my address? I can take care of that!] 
Once another security friend has asked me to take off my scarf, the same sourpuss who took my facewash tells me that my mascara is also liquid.
She crankily rebags it and sends it back through security.
All the while I alternate between wanting to crawl in a hole of shame and embarrassment and the urge to get real feisty with Madame de la Cranky.
I decide to just throw my shit back together red-faced and head for the gate.
Whilst waiting at the gate I get a hot dog, coke, and snickers to get me over the stress of being facewash-less and get me through the act of finding our hotel before we eat dinner once we land.
I sleep, open-mouthed and slightly drooly, for the duration of the flight.

Holla for truly embodying the appearance of helpless female travelers who need all the kindness and assistance the 'verse (universe, for those of you who don't watch Firefly. i.e. most of you.) can offer us.
People are so much more helpful that way.

We make it off the train and onto the correct tram with a little help from an elderly Dutch man.
We make it to the correct tram stop where were see a sign for our hotel.
We make it to the hotel!
We can practically taste the success of our solo travels!
And then we are informed that we do not actually have reservations.....
uhhhh excusez-moi?
Apparently the foreign lady I set up the reservation with on the phone wrote my e-mail down wrong and when my lovely small-town debit card didn't go through (as it does when it's feeling particularly cranky/I can't enter my PIN number) they never sent me an anti-confirmation e-mail or gave me a phone call informing me of this.
Luckily for us they had a room for four people for Friday night.
But not for Sunday.
So at that point we had seven people staying in a four person room and we were going to be homeless on Saturday night. [sidenote: the seven of us traveling together were me, Callie, Samantha, Francesca, Brenna, Elena, and Liz] 
Traveling blog gold, right here.

Now in order to get into the "hotel", we have to get buzzed in and retrieve our key from the front desk.
A point of interest considering we have to sneak three people back up into the room.
Remember this.
This will come up later in our adventures.

After rearranging our small room so that the double bed and two single beds are all combined into one giant bed that will sleep seven people, we head to Rembrandt Square to look for dinner.
Rembrandt Square is all lights and food and tourists and fun.
We end up eating at an Italian restaurant where they seat us awkwardly at two tables that are perpendicular to each other.
The waiter at our table is friendly and attentive.
The waiter at the other table is a little surly and not even remotely helpful.
After nomming to our heart's content and taking twenty minutes to pay for our check separately at the register, we head out to look for nightlife.
Amsterdam has four kinds of nightlife; bars, clubs, coffeehouses, and red-light district type entertainment.
We find a bar.
It's an Australian themed bar that serves large drinks and we happen to hit it up during happy hour.
AND a friendly Dutch guy gives me a free shot because he finds it to be too pink.
As happy hour ends, the bar crowd becomes more and more...diverse.
Definitely an older crowd.
Even the music is an odd mix of the songs you danced to during middle school and the stuff you hear on the radio today.
In other words, the seven of us danced in a circle and jammed whilst and at the same time avoiding the throng of creepers surrounding us.
The perfect table dancing opportunity.
The hotter it gets on the dance floor and the later it gets the more ready we are to head back to the good ol Flipper Hotel.
A twenty-five minute walk later and by the grace of landmarks and following tram lines, we make it back and manage to get everyone back into the room without question.
We organize a shower schedule and Samantha and I reveal to the poor girls traveling with us our obnoxious sides.
And then Samantha wakes me up a few times during the night in an attempt to stop my snoring.

Holy hell my long-windedness is becoming more and more apparent with each trip I venture on.

GOOD MORNING.
Impressively, everyone is showered, dressed, packed, and ready to go after a little breakfast by 10am.
Two people go downstairs and bring food back upstairs on a tray, despite signs asking us not to.
But we had seven people to feed and only four people who could technically go downstairs and get food.
Then two people leave their bags with us and five of us head down to check out.
While I'm carrying the contraband trays down the stairs, I run right into the front-desk-dude that we were trying to hard to avoid.
That same front-desk-dude-Asian-man checking us out asks us how many people we had in the room, we say four and that Brenna met us here that morning.
He starts getting the look of a puppy peeing on the carpet, a little nervous and confused as to what exactly is going on here.
Then he asks us if the two other girls in the dining room are with us.
We all look at each other and then with a completely blank face I look at him and say, "What?"
"The two...in there...? They with...you?"
"I'm not sure what you're talking about."
"Uhhh they...those two...uhh...nevermind."
After checking us out we inform that we were told we could store our bags there for the day since the hotel lost our reservation and we couldn't be expected to carry around our luggage while we looked for a new place to stay.
He actually counts our bags.
But never says anything.
I leave my number, in case a room opens up [ha! like he would ever actually call me.], and while he's in the back room putting away our luggage we hustle Liz and Elena out the front door.
Deuces Hotel Flipper, deuces.

We aim for meeting with a free tour.
And so does every other Spanish, Italian, and English speaking tourist in the city.
We don't get tickets.
Instead we head to eat at a famous pancake restaurant, and despite never actually making it to the famous one, we find a place with a table big enough for seven, cats wandering the restaurant, and some bomb-diggity pancakes.
Success.
We have found a hotel which is right next to Central Station, has two double rooms, and, as to be expected, costs more.
We head back to the flipper.
The same poor guy is desperately trying to make sense of how we managed this and I think trying to trip us up so he can properly accuse us of having too many people in a room.
Thank goodness we paid in cash.
We rescue our luggage, which I considered to be hostages, and hightail it to the other hotel so we can actually book our rooms.
Now booked and "unpacked" successfully, our group splits up for people to do as they choose.
Samantha and Francesca head to the Heinkin factory for the interactive tour.
Liz and Elena....well I actually can't remember where they were going, but I think they were meeting up with friends.
And Brenna, Callie, and I head off to just explore the city area right around the hotel.

As part of my promise to remain honest in this blog, I can tell you that three of us each indulged in a piece of surprisingly delicious rainbow cake that was homemade.
We then ate all of the samples in a cheese shop, everything made us giggle uncontrollably, and a nap has never felt so short or fabulous.
Deduce your own conclusion.

We are then forced out of comfortable beds and fabulous slumbers by Samantha and Francesca to head to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant [in China town!] that was voted one of the best restaurants in Amsterdam in 2011.
And the food was phenomenal.
I love an Asian food coma.

Even better than the Asian food coma?
Finding Sky vodka at the closest liquor store for 13euro.
The sticker gave us the incorrect price and the poor store owner told us he had to sell it to us for the advertised price.
We buy some mixers and then head back to the hotel so we have a place to enjoy our purchase other than the nearest park bench in the rain.

After playing the usual girly games, we head to the red-light district.
I was expecting to giggle inappropriately and stare uncontrollably...but I felt surprisingly uncomfortable.
These men had no qualms about knocking on doors and negotiating a rate in front of crowds and crowds of people.
Men were pointing out the ones they were going to buy to their friends or telling their friends which ones they should go for.
These women looked bored or completely zonked out; they don't have to pretend to enjoy it.
And we were the only all-female-non-bachelorette party wandering around.
It just blew my mind, how serious it actually was.
We talk about going to a sex show, but it's a little bit out of our price range.
Instead we head back to the main street where Samantha, Callie, and I decide to hang out in a bar called Teasers.
As it turns out, it gets its name from the fact that bartending girls dance on the bar in the short shorts and low cut, midriff baring tank tops, but they never actually remove any clothing.
Subsequently we are surrounded by an interesting hodge-podge of tourists, groups of men, and the occasional, we're assuming after serious observations, hooker.
When we've had enough we deem it snack time; I buy a waffle, covered in chocolate, topped with cream and strawberries and Samantha and Callie eat McDonalds.
We head back to the hotel where I have to ask the guy at the registration desk to let us in the elevator and then Callie and I have to pound on our door for three minutes to wake up its sleeping inhabitants.
Then we crawl into bed with the other two in the room and the four of us sleep horizontally, boiling hot and I'm pillowless.
But I still snore to the extent that I disturb my roommates, and there is no stopping me.

Sunday morning means our last morning in the Vegas of Europe.
Elena and Liz have woken up early to see the sights.
The rest of us did not manage to do that.

After another breakfast where one of us shouldn't have been there, we head to the Anne Frank house.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in history who has time to wait in the line.
After that sobering experience, we make our way in the cold and rain to an installation that is a giant sign that says 'I am' in red and 'msterdam' in white. [get it? I amsterdam. I am amsterdam.] 
My memories will always have thirty other stranger tourists in the pictures with me.
Back into the city for lunch which is followed by a trip to the cheese store around the corner that has free samples.
Plates and plates of cheese samples.
And in the adjoining shop?
Candy samples.
And Samantha is alllllll about these cheese samples. [the title of this blog might be a reference to an observation Samantha made upon entering this cheese nirvana. maybe.] 
Post cheese paradise is luggage retrieval, train station navigation, and then we're on our way to the airport.

The adventure concludes with us sprinting to our terminal after our delayed flight is no longer delayed and we notice that the screen says our gate is closing and we're still snacking.
An anxiety-inducing run was an exciting way to end our Amsterdam adventure.

And now, I am exhausted.
Zonked.
Pooped.
Tuckered out.

9:57pm Denmark
4:57pm USA