Above the influence

We woke up at about 6 am to hop on a train to Amsterdam for the day with two of our friends. We got there by a little after 8.

Instantly after walking out of the station we are greeted by the smell of cannabis. SAS drug tests so if anybody were to smoke or consume anything with weed in it I'm pretty sure they are kicked off the ship no matter what. Being the hardcore druggie I am it was hard to resist temptation but I'm happy to say that I successfully did. I actually know a bunch of kids who didn't even go to Amsterdam because they knew they would get in trouble.

Our first stop of the morning was breakfast because we were starving. We went to a really cute breakfast place for pancakes. After this we headed to the Anne Frank house. I actually hadn't even realized it was in Amsterdam. It was super cool/really sad. Part of it was walking through the actual rooms where she and her family hid and part was a museum.

After the museum we went to the Heineken factory, also hadn't realized this was in Amsterdam. I think I can say that this was the coolest thing I've done so far. We went on a tour of the actual factory and saw the history behind Heineken, how they make it, and they had their horses out to look at. After this part you go into a room and it's like a little ride type thing and they make you into beer basically, you are watching it happen on the screen and you can feel what's going on. After this you go into Heineken star shaped bars and a worker shows you how to properly pour and then you get a free glass of it. The rest of it is almost like a club, it's all different rooms and shows their commercials and they play music. I could've stayed there all day. At the very end you can learn how to properly pour a glass of Heineken and you get a certificate (you also get to drink that one that you poured).

When we left that we went to a place to eat lunch then we went to check out the red light district. It was so crazy. It was the daytime still so I can't imagine it at night but...(disclaimer: not suitable for children)... There were weed shops all over the place and hookers in windows and sex shops everywhere. I can't believe that it's a real place, everything on that street would be 100% illegal in the US but it's totally ok there.

After this we were all so exhausted from the day and it was getting late so we went to sit down in a Starbucks to get some wifi and to sit, our friends had a train at around 8 so after they left, Sydney and I ate dinner and tried to find out where to go for our bus to Paris. It ended up being in this super sketchy place just like we expected but there were a ton of other SAS kids on it so it wasn't too bad.

So at around 11 at night we got on our 7 hour bus ride to Paris. It was super uncomfortable and I didn't get to sleep at all. Oh well, who needs sleep?