The Pearson Project - Project Reports

Project Report Part 5

Venue: Amsterdam
Date: 22-26/11/2003
Team Members Present: Pearson, Gilly, Tooma + Richie

The wait was finally over, starting our countdown 152 days earlier we were simply so excited. Pearson, Gilly, Tooma and Richie were heading to Amsterdam to enjoy themselves and promote The Pearson Project.

Saturday 22nd November 2003

On the 22nd November 2003, the team awoke early. Gilly recieved a phone call from Tooma, Tooma informed Gilly that they were going to the Metro Centre - Gilly had no choice in the matter. As Pearson and Richie sat at home and packed their bags, Gilly and Tooma got some last minute accessories and then on the spur of the moment, headed up to see Duck who wasn't going to Amsterdam. After chatting with Duck for a while he wished us farewell, Gilly went home and Tooma went for a meal with his parents as he would be away on his birthday.
Around 2pm Gilly headed to Pearson's and Pearson's mother offered a lift to North Shields docks. We arrived at 2:50pm and then proceeded to look around the Royal Quays shopping outlet. Meanwhile Richie was heading towards the docks, as Tooma was still having a meal.
Gilly and Pearson left Royal Quays and arrived at the docks around 3:50pm, Tooma arrived at exactly the same time, and after bidding farewell to Tooma and Pearson's mother's we entered the terminal. The ferry was due to leave at 5:30pm so we had to be checked in by 4:30pm. The time was 4:25pm no sign of Richie, we were worried, however those worries soon subsided when Richie walked through the main doors as we rushed across to check in.
We went through check in and boarded the ferry, found our cabin and sat down. There was no turning back now - we were on our way to Amsterdam!!!

We sat in our cabin for about half an hour, then proceeded to go up on deck to watch us depart. Tooma was worried that the back doors where the vehicles entered weren't closed so he stood and carefully watched the DFDS Seaways staff until the doors were locked shut. We were about to head back to our cabin when we heard an air horn and some random shouting we couldn't make out. We looked across to the shoreline and spotted a couple of people on the rocks, they blew the airhorn again and shouted something else, we shouted "The Pearson Project" back to them. We didn't have a clue who it was, but it could've been good publicity for the site. As we were still up on deck we decided to stay a bit longer and then noticed a big building on the shoreline with the word "LAND" written in big letters on it. Strange.

We finally went back down to the cabin, and got ready to go explore the ferry. We went down the bottom deck and found a cinema that was showing Bad Boys 2, we opted against watching it as it would take up too much of our time (Despite being on the ferry for another 14 hours). We then went all the way to the top and found a swimming pool. As it was November and 6:30 in the evening it was unsurprisingly closed - not that we would've used it anyway.
Pearson and Tooma went exploring some more as Richie and Gilly entered a small room with lots of slot machines, Gilly won €2 and then the team regrouped and headed off in search of alcohol. We found 2 bars, on called the Admiral Pub - which looked posh. And one called the Jolly Roger which looked more like our type of thing. We sat down and ordered 4 pints of Heineken (Unbeknown to us, we were going to see a lot more of Heineken). The 4 pints were of an extremely low quality, they were watered down so much. We downed the pints and decided to move onto bottles, the only option was Bacardi Breezers which tasted nicer than the pint of water we just had. The 4 bottles of Bacardi came to an astonishing €18 (Roughly Ł12.60). While Richie and Gilly were getting the bottles, Tooma and Pearson noticed a woman dancing, who they named "Disco Woman". While we were drinking the bottles, we heard a track come on the disco, Robbie Williams - Angels. Gilly and Tooma strangely started singing along, we were happy for some reason. We finished the bottles and left the bar as we weren't too happy with what they served.

We then remembered passing a shop on the 5th deck of the ferry, would they serve alcohol? We entered the shop and right infront of us, was a 24 pack of Stella Artois, we bought this immediately, along with some chocolates. Tooma, Pearson and Gilly went up onto the top deck to look at the water, while Richie went back to the cabin to set up some "Happy 18th Birthday" banners and a few balloons for Tooma (Tooma didn't know Richie was doing this), we went back to the room around 11:50pm and Tooma was surprised when he seen all the banners, we wished him a Happy birthday when midnight struck, and then opened some more cans.

After finishing some more cans, Tooma opted to go back up onto the top deck and make use of the deck chairs which weren't being used (Unsurprising really, considering it was about 2am. Gilly took a couple of sandwiches up with him, and when he got to his last one Tooma started singing "It's the final breadbun" to the tune of 'The Final Countdown'. We watched 6 birds follow the ferry up above for about an hour while having another useless chat about random nonsense, then headed back to the cabin and decided we might as well get some sleep.

Sunday 23rd November 2003

We awoke just in time to see us dock at 9am. We made sure everything was in our bag and went back onto the top deck to watch the ferry dock, coming into the docks we noticed a large factory building with the name 'Kloosterboer' on, we thought it was class. First impressions were of a run down harbour in need of a lot of work. Typically it was raining when we departed the ferry. We strolled through customs, surprised at the ease in which we got through (Not that we had anything to hide of course). We managed to find the coach which was to take us to our hotel and we boarded that and waited for the other passengers.
During our wait, Gilly made a phone call home, informing his mother the team had arrived, but Gilly was more intrested in noticing his phone network had changed to 'Telfort', Tooma's had also done this.

After a 20 minute journey through some attractive scenery we arrived at the Amstel Botel. The rain was still lashing down, so the team went into the Botel and checked in. Unfortunately our rooms weren't ready, so we were asked to put our bags in the luggage room and come back in a couple of hours. We couldn't wait to explore and headed towards what seemed to be the main street. We came across a shop which held more bongs that any of the team had seen in their life. We could've spent the 2 hours looking around in the bong shop but the owner was giving us dodgy looks so we opted to leave. We then came across a local newsagents. As Gilly checked the Sunderland score from the day before on a newspaper stand outside, Pearson and Richie entered the shop. As Gilly was checking the score Tooma had noticed a man on the corner asking us to come over, we quickly went the opposite direction leaving Richie and Pearson behind. The team regrouped a few minutes later in the next street and carried on their walk. We went down a few more streets and noticed there wasn't much more than bong shops and coffeshops - we would come back to these later.

Back at the Botel we were finally allowed in our room. There were 2 rooms - Pearson went with Tooma while GIlly was with Richie. As Gilly and Richie were unpacking their bags, Pearson burst into the room exclaiming there was free hardcore porn on the TV. Richie refused to believe him, but Pearson flicked through the channels and lo and behold there was the hardcore porn. This kept the team happy for an hour but we decided to go do more exploring. We were getting hungry - we hadn't had a meal since early the previous day. We passed a few not so nice looking kebab shops, but with the hunger kicking in we entered a cafe called "Grand Potato". If you're ever in Amsterdam this place is highly reccommended. The man working there was very polite and helpful, we ordered our meals and were served with speed and politeness. With 4 of the team there, and only 3 seats in the small cafe, Gilly stayed standing, the owner went down the stairs and then re-emerged with another chair. We finished our meal, thanked the owner and headed off for another exploration.

We had heard of an English Breakfast bar/Coffeshop called Barney's and thought it would be a good idea to find it, we searched hundreds of streets to no avail, then decided to go ask for directions from the reception on the Botel, they gave us a map and marked on where they thought it was. We followed their directions, but still no Barney's.

Time had flown by during our useless search, it was already 4pm so we headed back towards the Botel again, and decided to laze about for a bit, then go to the bar on the Botel for a pint and a game of pool. Tooma played on the pacman game while Gilly played pinball. It was 5:30pm, we went back to our rooms, and got ready to go out again. Our first night out in Amsterdam. We went to a couple of local bars and found out they only served Heineken. We then headed up the road to the Rembrantplein where we came across a nice looking place called 'Coffeeshop Bar Smokey'. We liked the look of it so we went in. The drinks on offer were Heineken or Heineken. A pint of that each went down nicely. But no trip to Amsterdam would be complete without a little smoke, we asked at the bar and were promtly served with 3 weed joints (1 each for Gilly, Tooma and Pearson - Richie didn't smoke). We also tried the space cake on offer, and we were going to keep some for back in the Botel, but that was eaten as well. Some more pints, a couple more joints and some more slices of space cake went down nicely. Time had once again flown by and at 1am, we headed out in the search for more food. We weren't expecting many places to be open, but amazingly we spotted a Burger King (BK's in Amsterdam are open until 2am). While we were waiting to be served, we couldn't help notice a very large man(in height not weight) who must've been closing in on 8ft. He said "You guys got the munchies, we seen you in smokeys." The team couldn't help but laugh, and were relieved when the guy (Who was a basketball player) and his agent laughed back. We finished our meal and headed back to the Botel, the bar was shut so we went to bed.

Monday 24th November 2003

We were awoken early by the sound of the building site just outside the window, along with the smell of the free buffet breakfast along the corridor, the sweet smell of bacon wafted into our rooms, and Tooma was sitting in the breakfast area before you could say 'Bacon'. A long table stretched across the back wall, Bacon, Sausages, Croissants, Bread Buns. We picked up a plate and loaded it with the lot, orange and apple juice were on offer so we filled our glasses and sat down. Tooma took advantage by re-filling his plate - mainly with butter. We finished off our breakfasts and went back to our rooms for a lie down, we weren't used to being up this early. We got ready and headed out for another look around the famous city.

We hadn't travelled far the day before so we decided to walk further up the main street to the Leidseplein, more bong shops and more coffeshops kept us happy, we spotted some souvenir shops and decided we'd take something back for the rest of the team that hadn't came, along with some things for the family. A quick look around and we opted to get them another time. We headed off on more explorations and on our way up the main street we were approached by a tall stocky black man, the team put their hands in their pockets and kept tight ahold of their possesions - we'd been warned about the muggings in Amsterdam. The man asked if we wanted any cocaine. Now I know we were in Amsterdam but we weren't that stupid, we explained we didn't want any, but he was determined to sell, he put his arm around Richie and said he'd give us a special deal - again we said no. He let go of Richie and said "You need anything - you just ask for Jim."
It didnt take Richie long to notice that his mobile phone was missing. We knew that muggings were common here, but surely they wouldn't do it in broad daylight on a main street - would they? They would.
We didn't bother attempting any chase as Jim had already mystically disappeared, nothing we could do now so we carried on walking.

After walking up a few random streets and not finding anything of intrest we soon discovered we didn't have a clue where we were or where we were going. We found a map, Tooma noticed there was a zoo nearby so we attempted to find it as it could've been a laugh. Stoned animals? After about 10 minutes of walking Pearson exclaimed we were going the wrong way, we were confused and Pearson decided to walk off the other way. The rest of the team went across the road as we spotted a cinema, a Dutch cinema - we wondered what was showing. While looking at the boards on the wall and clearly not understanding a word of it, we forgot about Pearson. What if he was lost,what he if had been mugged, what if he he was being killed, what if.......ah fuck it, he'd be alrite. We carried on up the road and it was obvious that Amsterdam during the day was not the kind of place for young lads - souvenir shops and lots of cultural crap were all on offer, we knew we came here for the nightlife and so we decided to head back to the botel.
We reached the Centraal (It is spelt with 2 a's) Station and wondered what a Dutch train station was like. We soon found it was no different to an English one. We were getting hungry again, it was lunchtime, around 1pm. The Centraal Station had a Burger King (There's more BK's than Macdonalds in Amsterdam) so we headed in. We were just finishing our dinner when we remembered about Pearson - we expected he'd have gone back to the Botel, and sure enough there he was sitting at the Botel bar. We sat down alongside him and there was a short silence before Tooma offered Pearson a game of pool. We acted as if nothing had happened. We sat in the bar for an hour and then went back to our rooms. There was still a couple of cans of Stella left over from the ferry so we drank them and went back to the bar.
We got bored in the Botel, so we went for another pointless walk, during our walk we spotted Barney's Breakfast Bar, it was absoloutely nowhere near where the receptionist on the Botel thought. Barney's was absoloutley packed so we carried on walking and went back to Smokey's. It was a tough decision on which drink to buy - Heineken it was then. A couple of joints and some more space cake (Isn't this why we came to Amsterdam in the first place), then another look around the streets. Pearson found a Foot Locker and Tooma found the Dutch equivalent of HMV. Off we went back to the Botel.

When we were walking towards the main entrance, we noticed quite a few ducks in the water, and when we got back to our room we looked out the window and there was one lonely duck. We threw it some space cake and suddenly another 20 ducks came swimming out of nowhere. They got a bit of cake, and some fruit pastilles (they weren't getting all the cake). We sat in the room and watched some porn, then noticed it was 7:30, time to go out for the night.
We knew we'd most likely be heading back to Smokey's at some point so we checked out some other bars first. We spotted somewhere called "London Bridge" and assumed this was English - it was. We were about to ask for Heineken (What else had there been) when we noticed there was no Heineken tap. There was Boddingtons, or bottles of Brown Ale. We ordered the drinks and watched some Dutch football on the big screen. After working out how much the drinks had just cost us (About Ł5 each for 1 drink) we finished them and left. Back once again to Smokey's, we got our usual and sat down. Before long Richie went to the toilet and when he came back he said we'd been asked toplay pool with 2 Dutch girls - we were happy to oblige. The first girl was (How do I put this nicely) larger than average but spoke good English. The second girl was smaller with long blonde hair, more attractive - but couldn't speak a word of English. We took turns to play doubles, then had mixed teams and so on. By this time Pearson had had just a little too much to smoke, and was struggling to even stay on his seat properly. We chatted with the girls (Well, the one that could speak English anyway) but then they had to leave. We had a few more pints and also left.

We were hungry again, and with our expert knowledge we knew Burger King would still be open. 2am in Burger King in Amsterdam - this was the life. Most places were closing around 3am so we headed back to the Botel.

Tuesday 25th November 2003

Our final day in Amsterdam, once again we took advantage of the free breakfast and then headed off in search of souvenirs. We found that all the souvenir shops were owned by the same company so therefore it was the same products in each one, at least we didn't have to walk far. We knew we had to get the rest of the team something. And the first thing we spotted were a pair of Boxer Shorts with ganja leaves on - Lanky's present sorted. Duck next, a pack of cards, ganja leaves on them too. Wally's present was a lighter, with a ganja leaf on. And continuing the trend we got Harle some rolling papers and some rips(filters) - the packaging had ganja leaves on. That was the team sorted, now for family presents.
We spent a while getting some presents, along with stuff for ourselves as well. Pearson and Richie finished first so they headed back to the Botel, while Gilly and Tooma went in search of more presents. They found themselves a couple of t-shirts and got stuff for the rest of the family. With time running out we headed back to the Botel. the bus was picking up at 4, it was now 2pm. We decided to just stay in the Botel bar. We emptied our rooms and boarded the bus - we were heading away from Amsterdam. The bus took us back to Ijmuiden port and we waited at check in until the ferry was ready.
Sitting bored at check in, Gilly and Tooma had a small pointless conversartion;

Gilly: "Tooma are you proud?"
Tooma: "Yea, I'm proud"
Gilly: "What of?"
Tooma: "Erm, that man"

Tooma was pointing at some old man with white wispy hair. He must've been about 70, what was a 70 year old man doing visiting Amsterdam. We decided he wasn't here for the scenery.

We boarded the ferry and found our new cabin. The woman on the loudspeaker announced that the ferry was leaving in 5 minutes, so Tooma raced up onto the top deck to check that the back doors were closed. We bid Amsterdam farewell. We'd thouroughly enjoyed ourselves and knew we'd be back again.
We stayed up on deck for a while until we could no longer see the flickering lights of the port. What were we going to do on the 14 hour journey home? That problem was solved when we got to the onboard shop for another 24 pack of Stella. We sat in our cabin and reminisced about the fun we'd had over the last few days. We still had 13 hours left, and attempted to make the most of it. There's not much you can do on a ferry in the middle of the North Sea though. We went back onto the top deck and once again used the Sun beds while drinking Stella. The sea was rough, and the waves crashed up against the side of the ferry, the boat creaked like an old staircase so Tooma thought it would be a good idea to try and have a shower. It wasn't the best of ideas. The team sat in the cabin while Tooma crashed about in the shower, he was struggling to stand up with the ship rocking about. He came out and then the rest of the team had a go (Seperately). Despite it being a good laugh, it hurt.
We had the choice of going to the bar (And drinking beer which was more like water) or finishing off the Stella in the cabin. All but Richie opted to stay in the cabin, he went off to the bar while the rest of the team lazed about. Richie had bought a packet of sweets from the shop earlier, Pearson thought it would be funny to hide them under Richie's bed - so he did. Richie came back from the bar and noticed his sweets had gone, Pearson owned up and said they were under the bed. Richie looked under then came back up;

Richie: "They're not there" Pearson: "Yes they are" Richie: "No they're not" Pearson: "The bloody are I threw them there" Richie: "They're right at the back"

Richie got his sweets and then threw one of Pearsons shoes towards the cabin door. Pearson hit Richie and a fight began. Gilly and Tooma were quick to break it up, and Richie went back to the bar. Pearson, Gilly and Tooma went to sleep around 3:30am, but were awoken not long after by the sound of Richie throwing up in the toilet - seemed as if he had a bit too much to drink. Richie eventually dropped off into bed.

Wednesday 26th November 2003 But once again the team were awoken, this time by the next door cabin. At 5:30am a loud shout of "Oh yahhhhh" came from next door. The team found it hilarious, but then couldn't get back to sleep, so went up onto the top deck - without Richie who was still recovering. We used our deck chairs and watched us come back into North Shields port, Richie emerged on deck. We docked at 9am and left the ferry. Tooma's parents were waiting in the car park and they took us for a full English Breakfast in nearby Gosforth, at a place called Willy's. On the way there, Tooma's dad asked if we had heard the air horn when we left. The team looked around at each other and all said "So that's who it was". We were then drove home and it soon hit us that that was the end of the holiday. Back next year!