Amsterdam!

As per my last post you read that I was in Düsseldorf, which to be honest was kind of a boring city, but still quite good. When I left there I went to Cologne, which is a city I loved. The part of the city I was most looking forward to was the Dom, the cathedral and tower. I'd seen pictures of this beauty before but those photos could never do it justice. It is a massive building turned almost black from all the years of wear and tear I guess would be the best way to describe it. But the detailing and time that has been put onto the walls of the building are incredible. Everywhere you look is a detail you probably missed the first time your eyes scroll around the building, and each side of the building is different than the last side. The inside is no exception for the amount of beauty it displays. With ceilings that expand higher than the full 2 story house I live in its just an awe to walk into. My jaw literally dropped as I entered. The windows are all ornate stained glass, and if there's not a window there is a painted mural somewhere nearby or some other decoration.
The only thing better than the building itself are the two towers that grow to a height of about 515 ft high. I could not successfully get both towers in the same photo. The entrance to climb to the top of one of the towers actually starts below the cathedral itself, which I don't think is helpful, but hey it works. After probably 2/3 of the way up the stairs you come to a resting area, I was so thankful for this. In this area you have the 9 bells of the cathedral, each one a different size so no two bells are the same.  You have a chance to walk all the way around the bells on a walkway of sorts. I think they probably went through a lot of work to get those bells up there, I can't even imagine. How difficult it would've been. Final after you walk up all 532 steps to the top of the tower you can take a breath of the cool wind blowing through the open tower compared to the sweltering heat of those spiral staircases, but the views from the top are worth the hard climb. Despite not getting a clear view, it's obstructed by part of the building all that detail work I mentioned from before, it's one you definitely have to see, it is completely breathtaking.
To be honest I think the climb down the spiral staircases are scarier and harder than the climb up. To get up to the very tip top you have to pass through 3 sets of stairs. The one set of spiral staircases can only fit one person, safely; there is a separate entrance and exit to the tip top. Going down that staircase I was literally frightened, I don't think my hand left the walls at any point in time until I reached the bottom.
After leaving Cologne I arrived in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Utrecht is a smaller version of Amsterdam basically, more local versus touristy. But it was very nice I have to admit. The one day I spent there I just took a long walk, got lost but that's almost fun now. I did do a canal tour which was really cool. We passed under one bridge that was literally an inch higher than the top of the boat. The tour mentioned one pancake house that was actually opposite the canal where you board and exit the boats and oh my goodness was it ever delicious. I had a pancake with peaches, cherry liqueur, ice cream and whipped cream, I was in breakfast for dinner heaven.
When I left Utrecht I headed for Amsterdam, which to be honest was nothing like how I expected it, but I'll get to that in a second. When I first got there I didnt even get to my hostel before I took in a bike tour which I really enjoyed. The only part I didn't enjoy was 35+ degree weather, wearing jeans, riding a bike for two hours. That was probably some of the hottest weather I have come across my entire trip, but maybe it was just my jeans exaggerating the temperature.
On my first full day there I took part in a walking tour of the city, through the same company as the bike tour, and guess what I had the same guide! She was amazing I have to say and a local from Amsterdam so we had a bit of a different inset into the city. I also met some really cool Canadians on the tour and hung out with them the rest of the day. It's nice to have a break from the lonely traveller life sometimes.
I also had a break from it the next day too; surprisingly I met more Canadians and hung out with them. I went for lunch with one girl and we had to run back to the hostel in the pouring rain. We got completely soaked and almost had to rent a blow dryer for our shoes. But that night I went on a red light district tour and it was really informative. I'm pretty sure the guide thought I hated him, he kept giving me these questioning looks. The red light district is what I was surprised about. My parents told me before I left to stay away, and not to walk around there at night, and to be honest I was a little frightened too. But getting the chance to experience it at, even at night, really changed my views. If you walk through the area you notice how only the bottom level of most buildings are for the sex workers, sometimes you see them on higher levels but most often just the bottom. But then you start thinking, what happens up top? The answer is residents of the city live there. Yes, not only is the red light district an area for prostituion, it is also a residential area. That is what surprised me, the normalcy of it. It was a good surprise, I actually really enjoyed the time I spent in the red light district. I hung out with a couple of awesome people after my tour and we basically wandered around the red light district for a while.