Amsterdam Day 2 / Night 2

In the morning I got up and did a walking tour of Amsterdam. It was free but the guide got all his money from tips. We saw some interesting things, This:

is a "urine deflector" which is designed to stop people pissing in the corners beside people front doors. We also went to a hidden church which was used when it was illegal to be that type of religion (can't remember which, pretty crap brain). From the front it looks like a normal house and inside it looks like this:

It was pretty good and lasted about 3 hours so I gave him 10 euro which was still cheaper the 9 pound tours of London. At the start of the tour he asked "what do you think of when you think of Amsterdam?", of course "drugs and prostitutes" were called out. Then we went around and he told a lot about the history and how drugs and prostitution came to be popular, mainly due to it being such a big center for travellers. It was interesting that drugs are actually illegal in the Netherlands and there are no special laws making them legal in Amsterdam but the authorities just don't enforce the law. He asked the same question at the end when the answer given was "tolerance". Apparently one of the main rule in Amsterdam is: "be polite and discrete". Which explains a lot. All in all a very nice town with a pretty awesome canal system (way more canals than Venice apparently).

In the afternoon I went to the meeting point of another walking tour about beer with various tastings along the way (it was advertised with big letters saying "This is not a pub crawl!) but unfortunately no one else turned up. Instead I went back to the hostel and had some drinks with some of the other people in the hostel. Things evolved and we ended up going on a real pub crawl where we definitely weren't "tasting" beer. It was a pretty good time. Unfortunately when I went home all of the eating places were closed. Even BK and McDonalds was closed. All I could find was a dude that told me he was going to a party where I could have "as much cocaine as you like, for free". I had a vision of myself on a cocaine-fueled bender in Europe ending up stuck in a tree, wearing only my undies, with a tattoo of a monkey carrying a portrait of my brothers face on my left thigh, somewhere on the coast of the Mediterranean. I politely declined the offer and found no food. This was pretty shit and I had to go to bed very hungry and reasonably drunk. However, I went to bed with the best intentions to get up early and go to a museum before I had to leave.