As with day two of our trip we ended up getting up late... again! However it was not nearly as late so we got ready and made it out at a decent hour. There was only one thing that we wanted to do that day and that was the Heineken Experience! The last time me and Martin went to another country on holiday we went to Dublin, and went to the Guinness Brewery. We really enjoyed it so we had high hopes for Heineken and I even said to Martin "If it's as half as good as the Guinness one I'll be impressed!"

A lot of the brewery was full of items from times gone, so things like old barrels, adverts etc. This is just one of the many photos I took of things like that, and these are beer mats. I kind of wanted to take them all home! I love the design of these, they're all different yet were all for the same brand of beer.


I don't know what these are called, nor can I remember what they were for! They were used as part of the beer making process but for which bit, I don't know. I think it had something to do with the barley and water because we had little tasters of this (You can see the member of staff stood next to a table with tasters on). These had open doors on the side and showed some video projected onto the inside.


These were dotted about all through the brewery, and they were basically introducing each section with a little info about whatever part you were in. In all honesty they weren't very noticeable and this was probably the first one that I came across! Again I love the design of these, really simple and clear but still had the "vintage" feel that so many of us love.


There was a section about halfway through that took us into a room with loads of other visitors for a tasting session. We all got a little glass each and was told how to taste the beer and why it was made the way it was, which was actually quite interesting! This glass of Heineken wasn't part of the two pints we got at the end either - so by the end we'd had quite a lot to drink!


This was one of my favourite sections, just because it looked so cool! On the wall next to this was a section about the new Bond film, Skyfall, which Heineken currently have a TV advert with. In the next room they played the advert along with loads of others. This display kept moving and changing which was pretty cool, but the most impressive bit was what the display was made out of, which was...


Heineken bottles! How cool is that? I have no idea how they managed to project imagery onto the bottles but it looked fantastic. This was ripe for a photo opportunity, so I grabbed as many as I could and this one is my favourite. The lighting was constantly changing due to it being a moving picture display so it took a good few tries. This will probably end up being my new desktop wallpaper!


The next section was also pretty awesome, because it was entirely lit by UV light and almost everything inside it was detailed in UV paint. This was a display of bottles much in a similar fashion to the previous one, although these ones were stood up and didn't have anything projected onto them.


In this section also was several TV screens with moving images on, which I didn't quite get but it looked pretty good! There was also a giant screen which you had to stand in front of with your arms held up, and a ball of light attached itself to your hand on the screen - so when you moved your hands, you made light patterns! I caught some video footage of this which you guys will see at some point.


After going a bit mad in the souvenir shops, we walked all the way back to our hotel to drop our purchases off. On the way back we stopped off at the other Heineken shop to claim our free gift, which turned out to be a bottle opener, which was pretty neat! This was our view out of our hotel window just as the sun was setting - this is one of the many churches in Amsterdam but I have no idea what it's called!


Taken at the same time as the previous picture, this was looking left out of our window. We were on a street with a tiny little canal, which considering how small it was was always having boats chugging up and down it! It was a great little area, fairly quiet at night and pretty busy during the day. The ducks kept waking us up in the morning with their constant honking at each other!


After dropping our stuff off and freshening up we headed back out to find some tea. I had heard of a Chinese restaurant that got good reviews called Nam Kee, so seeing as it was very close to our hotel we went to check it out. It was very busy inside despite it being a weekday (A sign of a good restaurant if there ever was one) and we ended up sharing a big table with another couple, but it worked out just fine.


I had "meat" (which was tasty but unspecified) with egg fried rice and shrimps, and Martin had chicken noodles if I remember correctly. The portions were huge, I wasn't expecting so much and I couldn't finish it! But it was very tasty, reasonably priced and the service wasn't bad, so I would recommend going there if you were going to Amsterdam.

After tea we ended up going to another coffeeshop/bar, where I tried another couple of joints and Martin stuck to drinks... again nothing happened to me! It was a great little place though so it wasn't entirely a waste of time and a nice way to finish our last night in Amsterdam. The next day was going home day so I'll tell you all about that in the next (and probably last, for a while anyway) Amsterdam post!