Speeding through the streets of Amsterdam in our cab, Ibrahim, our driver was getting far too excited!

“Elaina… You have to try Elaina! ”

He had us in stitches. He was like a kid at Christmas, with a massive grin on his face talking about his favourite prostitute. He described her so well, it felt like we knew her all our lives!
No disrespect, but no thanks mate. Being her 1000th customer this week sounds a little grim. She did sound pretty hot though 😉.

We pull up outside our hotel, a plushy little number called The Hoxton. Right on the canal, centrally located, this place looked decent at 1st glance.
Ibrahim grabs all our bags out of the boot and says “Elaina! You must! You will not be disappointed!”  – Haha this dude has no chill!

Free beers on check in, a great vibe and just the right amount of quirk to satisfy the hardest to please, The Hoxton ticked all the right boxes.

The rooms had all the things you’d expect plus more. High end quality for bargain prices. Cant go wrong. Highly recommended.

Anyway, enough of all that stuff!

October in the dance music scene, all roads lead to Amsterdam for ADE. Being the 20th anniversary, Amsterdam Dance Event was the place to be.

Catering for House, Deep House, Trance and Techno listeners, ADE had events all over the city spread over 5 days, from cafe raves, to underground car park raves, massive clubs and festivals.

Returning for our 2nd year for a weekend, us 7 lads couldn’t wait to get stuck in!

All showered and raring to go, we set off on our adventures… First stop, food! After all, who knows when we’d eat again!

After a few weeks of prep in group chat, we had a solid plan of what we were going to be doing. I know, so female of us! Ha.

Bar-B, was destination one. Only around a 10 minute walk, dodging maniac cyclists trying to run us over, and we were there. And what a wicked place this was too. Beers and Burgers essentially, but with that added extra that makes Bar-B stand out from the crowd.
Serving up build your own burgers and beer on tap, yes literally a beer tap on our table, what could go wrong?

Many, many beers later – and might I add – the most fantastic Wagyu beef burger ever, we were done.

Honestly, it is a crime if you go to Amsterdam and don’t eat here!

Full the the brim with burgers and beer, we decided to go walk it off for a bit.. Could think of worse places to walk it off than the Red Light District 😉.

What a random fucked up place it is too. Street after street of any shape, size, colour, you want.

Sex shows, strip bars, all kinds of other weird shit.

We opted in the end to watch a ping pong show.. Proper funny! And without going into too much detail, this girl was pretty impressive! Hitting the target from meters away.. Well mostly.. She nearly had my eye out!

1am and off to the Gashouder we went for the big club night of the evening. Completely sold out so we expected it to be a sweat box!

The Gashouder is located in an old gas works complex, in north west Amsterdam. A huge circle industrial building with an iron roof, gave this place that proper underground edgy feel, perfect for a techno rave.
Arguably the main event of ADE, Carl Cox, King Kong of the techno scene had the venue rocking! Then halfway into his set, out came the legendary laser ball. Never have i seen anything like it. Then to follow, the indoor fireworks went off and the place erupted! What a venue! What a night so far.

The venue has this drink tokens system, and I stupidly bought too many. So after trying to drink too much and about an hour into some random Italian girl waffling on about her cat, it was 6am and we decided to make a move.

Ruined, but ready for the Dockyard Festival that starts in 5 hours.

Day 2 and about 3 hours sleep later, I was feeling rather rough.  Won’t go into too much detail but I was in a bad way.

Boarding the ferry over to the dockyard wasn’t my finest move.. All the lads were giving me jip, suggesting how I couldn’t handle it. Getting proper mugged off. ” Ha Gaaaayyy! “.

I made it. Thank fuck!

The Dockyard festival was just like any other festival. Just different settings which made it pretty cool.

Instead of drinking, a couple of us bought a space cake on the way. New experience so this should be fun. And fuck me was it..

The day was a complete blur of random trippy, funny shit and I spent most of my day chilling in a shipping container that had been decked out with bean bags.

The Dutch are a pretty funny bunch. Or was it the space cake? Who knows.

9pm and we’d had enough. Time to get back for some food and ready for our last night, at Circo Loco.

I don’t know whose clever idea it was to get another space cake for the walk home, but here we go.

In fact, this was a “Puff Muffin ” – the guy told us. Looked nice. Tasted nice, too.

45mins later we were fucked.

One of us got mega paranoid and thought someone was following him, so decided to leg it!

Another could hardly walk due to jelly legs. And I couldn’t walk unless I was doing lunges. What on earth had we eaten. Proper tripping balls. Funny though!

We thought it was a good idea to go back to the hotel and just ride it out, then get back out…

Nope.. We woke up sprawled across one of our rooms at 9am and missed our last night. I wouldn’t say wasted though, as I had a brilliant time. The only thing I could really remember was listening to the radio and thinking the songs were instructions –  so I was buzzing about the room doing weird shit like some wacky Japanese TV show.
Beer and a fry up seemed to fix us up –  and after a mini bar crawl later we ended up back at the Red Light District.

Still not convinced, I just found it all quite funny and a little grim.

Until, what I can only describe as a Worldie, opens her door and tries to usher me in. And when I say Worldie – I mean, INSANELY hot!

“Come on in baby, I’ll give you a good time” she says. While I stand there like a fucking shy looking 5 year old.

An inner battle ensues.. Do I wanna be customer 1001.. No! Snap out of it! But she’s hot! So what, don’t do it!

I blame it on the beer! Ha.

After finally coming to my senses, and escaping her spell, i gladly walked away, jumped in our cab to the airport… but couldn’t help thinking, “Elaina, was that you?”.