Tales of the travelling Rikaitch

My lounge looks like a small clothes explosion, what with suitcases etc everywhere. This lead me to remembering a jolly boys outing I went on as a teenager back in the early 90s.

Amsterdam

I was working for a nightclub called Gatsby's in Reading, and the boss had got all the staff a chance of a cheap weekend in the land of the fella, Amsterdam. Basically, for £75 we had 2 nights in a cheap hotel and flights from Heathrow. He'd even chuck in a car to take us to the airport after work on the Thursday night, because we were on one of the first flights out on the Friday morning. This was a bad thing, because basically we were all beered up and rowdy when we got to Heathrow in the early hours. We had about 3 hours to kill before we could even check in, so we settled down to a game of cards, and a few of the lesser mortals grabbed some kip, before catching the 8:30 flight.
We arrived safely, and caught a taxi to our hotel. The problem was it was about 10:30, and the room wasn't ready, so the 6 of us collapsed in exhaustion in the hotel reception to wait for our rooms. "It'll only be an hour" said the guy on the front desk, so we agreed to wait. Within 5 minutes, there wasn't a single one of us who wasn't catching flies, head back and making a long "ZZZZZzzzzz" noise. We were woken up as promised an hour or so later, and got to our rooms. We'd agreed that once we checked in we'd grab a couple of hours kip, but after our 60 minute siesta already, we were raring to go. It was 11:45, and most of us had had an hour's sleep. You know this'll end badly.
We found a bar called the Brown Bar, on the edge of the Leidseplein. "6 pints of your finest beer please barman. What about you guys?" was shouted upon entry. The barman must have said "Oh God, not more boozy Brits," to himself, but had a plan.
"I'm sorry, we don't serve pints. We have a small or a large beer, which would you like?" he said with a glint in his eye. Silly question really. The heineken was dished out in glasses about 3/4 of a pint, but half of it was head, so we decided that was a bit nancyboy, and did he have anything stronger. Going to a darkened fridge hidden from view under the end of the bar, he pulled out a short overweight stubby of a beer called Duvel. I don't remember a lot else. We went staggered back to the hotel about 3:30 in the afternoon. I vaguely remember crossing the road and avoiding a tram, but really not much else, where I must have passed out.
We all sort of surfaced about 6:30, and compared notes on what happened, how we got back to the hotel, etc etc. We decided to go and sample the most famous sight in Amsterdam for 6 single men on the prowl, the red light district. The funny thing was, we couldn't find it to start off with. We must have skirted the edge for half an hour, hearing tales of other men walking away saying about the stripper in one bar, or the threesome another had had. Suddenly, I catch a glimpse of a shop's mannequin in a pink light. I thought to myself "we must be close" when the mannequin moved. Jackpot! We walked up and down, seeing one far eastern woman after another, masquerading in the window. None of them tickled our fancy (excuse the pun), and we were more then disappointed when we all agreed to grab a bite to eat. Opposite us was a bakery, and we though we'd get a cake or two, even though we thought it was unusual to have a bakery open at 8pm on a Friday night. Yes, we know now. Whilst sat munching away, ("They're very moorish, aren't they?"), Mark (wideboy famous for catching a dose all to often) spots something, and his chin drops. We all look to see what he's staring at, and across the canal is a tall, blonde and slender purveyor of all things sexual in the window opposite. "F**k that," says Clive. "I intend to," says Mark. Much fighting over who's going in, and Mark wins. Admittedly, he was the only one to pay for it that weekend...

More from the dutch capital on Thursday...