Day 4: Heineken Experience

I meant to write earlier so now I'll have to be brief since I'm about to crawl into bed. It's nearly 1am here on Monday morning.

Sunday was an outstanding day. Got to sleep in this morning after spending Friday and Saturday night on the town. Had a visit from an attractive woman who works in the building regarding having my pipes fixed in the bathroom... (Wait, what? But seriously, there's a leaky pipe behind the toilet in my room, so Lotte was nice enough to come survey the damage and set up a time to have it fixed.)

Stupid joke? Well, I guess I'm a legend in my own mind, folks.

I was able to pull together a decent-sized group to go over to the Heineken Experience tour this afternoon. I think we had about 12 in all out of about 20 students.

So far, I'd say that's the best 18 euros I've spent, and I think there are plenty of others in the group who would say the same. None of us knew exactly what to expect, but we were all blown away and had a huge blast. If you've ever been to Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, PA, think of the Heineken Experience like that, except for beer instead of candy! There was a museum with plenty of artifacts and displays about the history of the brewery, the Heineken family, and the methods behind crafting the beer. We got to visit the old brewing room, took the "Brew You" ride for a spin, sampled beer fresh off the line, played foosball, made music videos, and even bottled our own Heineken!

Afterwards we had to walk about 20 minutes to another Heineken brand store in order to pick up the "free gift" we were promised with our wristbands we got upon entering the former brewery. It's a bottle opener. A nice one at that, but several of the Economics students, myself included, found ourselves weighing opportunity costs of walking so far for such a seemingly insignificant prize. We unanimously decided that we'd be damned if we didn't milk our money's worth out of the experience, so we continued on and claimed our exclusive "e" shaped bottle openers!

Later a handfull of us went to dinner at Villa Maria Argentinian Steakhouse near Leidseplein then took the tram over to Dam Square where we found an excellent gelato shop. I had chocolate and stroopwafel in a dish. (Google it)