The Hippie Commune and a quaint Dutch town

We arrived in Amsterdam and I was instantly hit by the cruel force of jet lag. I should digress, on the plane I was the lucky one to sit by a rastafarian - you know the guy with the birkenstocks on with socks, scruffy, long facial hair, and his dreadlocked hair pulled back into one of those ridiculously large, clown like, caps where all of his hair is matted within. Of course, he has all the makings of a Bob Marley follower. I'm not making fun of him, that is seriously the look he was portraying. So, on the plane, it was him, me, and then Phil. Of course I didn't get any sleep.

So, we make what would turn out to be the hour long trek out to the hostel. We chose this one because pictures are deceptive and we thought it was little more than a campground with trailers. At least we would be in a place to ourselves as we fought off jet lag, i.e. collapsed into sleep whenever we needed to. Ah, but little did we know what was in store.

Stepping into the office, we should have been tipped off when we heard Sublime playing in the reception. Hmm. Nope, but we didn't catch on. Then, as we were checking in and the guy said, "you are free to smoke whatever you want, just not in your room." Hmm. Nope. Still didn't fully grasp it. Even as we walked to our trailer through the massive purple dinosaur sculpture and lizard sculptures. We thought it was a bit odd, but ok. It's Amsterdam.


This is when we figured out what we had gotten ourselves in to - see, we needed food and with our budget that meant finding a grocery store. Our hostel rented bikes (LOVE Dutch bikes), and as we went to select one, we were led back to where the workers lived. And, instead of flowers adorning their yards, it was a weed factory. Ok, now we knew.

We were totally safe, felt perfectly fine, but knew we would not be returning at the end of our trip, as we had planned.
We biked through the gorgeous Dutch countryside to the nearby town. We came back to the hostel, cooked our food, and crashed. The journey had just begun.