Amsterdam

How to describe Amsterdam........ Its fairly hard to articulate what Amsterdam is like, after having a couple of days back at work we will attempt to describe the city that is the most alternative city you can imagine.

i) bikes.... they reckon there is about 600,000 bikes in the city, not hard to believe there are bikes everywhere and where as in London, car parks are gold, the same is true of a bridge rail / lamp post / rubbish bin, anywhere you can lock you bike to. They say bike theft is a problem in the city .. don't really understand why when they appears to be six bikes for every person.

ii) Coffee shops - A new meaning for 'coffee' indeed. If you want to see 80 year olds having a reefer or a quiet pipe with their newspaper, Amsterdam is the place to be. Needless to say across the road from every 'coffee shop' there is a munchies bar - this means on every street there is a coffee shop and kebab shop!!!!! . A coffee shop should not be confused with a cafe which serves actual coffee... so they call it - it was crap.

iii) the red light district - Not much you can say, that's not actually true we could write alot but in keeping with the R13 rating of the blog we will leave it and say it needs to be seen to be believed.

iv) Trams - the trams share the roads with bikes, people and the odd car. There are no road rules and if you think crossing Willis street at lunch is dangerous, try crossing the main road in Amsterdam.... combined with the 'coffee shops' one of our favourite things was just watching folk go about their business and trying to cross roads. Controlled mayhem that is self regulating - it just wouldn't be allowed in the land of the long white cloud. ACC and OSH would be all over it.

We also managed to knock off the Heineken experience (entry buys you a tour, 3 beers and a gift... go figure it was a bottle opener in a bottle of Heineken). Fourth form history also came alive with a visit to Anne Franks house -a surreal experience. Kudos to the foreign folk who lent us they umbrella while we waited in the pouring rain to get in...

Still don't really know what to make of Amsterdam, nothing can prepare you the laxed feel and acceptance of what the west generally term unacceptable - not a place that is forgotten easily.

T-365 Days

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

or should that be aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Service in the UK

I ordered a pair of Sunglasses online last week. I received this email yesterday .... i did what you are not suppose to do and replied straight away. Service in general over here is shite so i decided to reply according. I wonder if and when i'll get my glasses!!!!

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Dear Ben , We are emailing you to let you know that the sunglasses you have ordered are currently out of stock but are due to be delivered to us shortly. We will email once they are in stock and we send them to you. If you would like an alternative colour or model that we can ship to you now please let us know.



Many thanks, The Sunglasses Shop
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Dear XXXXX

I find that completely unacceptable. The sole reason i brought the glasses from your website was that they were in stock. Your price was more expensive than most and you charged for delivery (this would not be an issue if you could provide a reasonable service). You have charged my debit card, waited a week to email me that my order can't be actioned and you have NOT given me a expected date.To add to my frustration i find that if i go back the website, the glasses that i ordered show as 'in stock'. Please explain that one to me......


I do not think it is unreasonable to request my money back in light ofthe facts:

i) i have no idea when i can expect to receive my glasses
ii) It took a week to send an email to advise this
iii) Your website shows them in stock
iv) There is zero acknowledgement of the inconvenience or annoyancethis has caused me
v) If i wanted another model / colour i would of ordered them in thefirst place, i would like the glasses that i ordered

If you are struggling to see my frustration i am more than happy totalk through the issue with someone there to give you a customer viewpoint of your process.

Please advise how i can get a refund or confirm that i will have the glasses before the 18th. Which is 2 weeks from purchase and is themaximum that you allow for delivery if i have read your website correctly.

Regards,

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I await a reponse..

16 Weeks To Go

16 weeks until what???

16 weeks until we line up for our first marathon ever, that's right we made a pretty quick and sudden decision that we needed an event to train for and this is it. We miss competing and Ben's worried about joining the hundy club (and so he should be because there won't be a beach wedding next year if he's in the prestigious club!). So we picked our date (30th September) and then searched for a marathon on this day (marathons are huge on this side of the world, you could find one in Europe on any weekend you wanted).

We've entered the Budapest marathon as conveniently this is somewhere on our must travel list and its a bigun with an expected 4,500 marathoners taking part!

Normally you'd want around 20-24 weeks of dedicated running training but we wanted to race the 30th September so we can go and enjoy ourselves at Oktoberfest in Munich the following weekend! Smart logic, we know.

We did our first long run yesterday of 90 mins and are expecting to build that up to about 3 hrs over the coming months, as long as we don't fall apart before then which knowing us, is a real possibility so go on, start making bets on how many weeks we last! Ben already has a sore knee from yesterday and we have to look after ourselves since chiropractors cost around 60 quid a session...

We'll keep you posted on our training and smaller races we do before the big day.

The Home of Football

So another week passes, just another Friday night - maybe just a couple of beers at the pub then a kebab. That was one option, the other was to head to the new Wembley and check out a couple of teams, i think they were called En-ger-land and Brazil or something.

Anyhow, its takes all of 5 seconds to appreciate the stadia when you get off the tube. Wembley is truely EXCEPTIONAL. In summary 90,000 people and not a single queue to get in, for beer or to access the 2500+ toliets.... (The no queue didn't extend to getting home where we had to line up for 90 mins to catch the tube.... a chance to sober up, but seriously the line was 1500 meters long.)

The game itself was fairly avg, Brazil looked tired and Kaka and Rabbit Teeth didn't seem to want to play. Beckham was by far the best player on the pitch, his vision is something else, Gerrard was magic as usual.

A burger costs you 4.50 or you combo for 7.50!!!!!!! - stay away... thats what we said until we got hungry and ended up getting piece of pizza bread for 4.50 apop....Beer on the other hand is not 2 bad for a stadium only 3 pound. You have to drink before kick off tho, as they stop selling and you are not allowed to take beer to your seat (obvious reasons).

90,000 people can make alot of noise and when Franky nudged the ball in the back of the old onion bag the crowd went nuts, just outdoing the national anthem and beckham chant.

Typically England lost it in the last 5 seconds.. a suitable finish to a historical occasion.