Waking Up In Amsterdam!

I am naming today’s post after my friend Todd’s weblog, only because it is so appropriate! I have been on a GREAT European extravaganza since Thursday night when my plane took off from BWI airport in Baltimore, Maryland USA. My flight got me to London Heathrow Airport around 9:15am, where I promptly hopped a quick flight over to the Netherlands to spend a couple of days in Amsterdam. After arriving at the hotel, I met up with my bro Todd. I dropped off my bags and we went directly to the offices of Hyves, the absolute best social networking site that I have come across online so far. I have joined many communities, Friendster, LinkedIn, etc but nothing has kept me coming back more than Hyves. Hyves is a great group of people, a solid team thats building a rapidly growing online community. Check it out. I wish them all the best.

Immediately after the Hyves meeting, we went over to our friend Daans house, then headed out for a wonderful dinner at Blender. A very tucked away private restaurant on one of the canals. Great ambiance, great service, great people, great food. What else is there to say.

After dinner, which ended around 11:45 -12am, the crew was ready to roll. Little did I know I would be treated to some of the coolest “non-tourist” action in Amsterdam. We arrived at Club 11 around 12:45 where we all proceeded to dance our asses off until 4:15 am. That was probably the longest stretch I have had in a couple of years :-) add in the jetlag factor (no, not even a nap), and you can imagine how I felt when I arrived back at the hotel at 5am.

I got out of bed this morning around 11:45am (after 2 wake up calls that started at 11am), showered and headed out for a few more meetings that Todd had set up. We are on a mission here folks :-) . After a brief stop at the flower market to pick up some Dutch tulip bulbs for my wife, we met with Manne and Phil from WickedJazzSounds. We had a great discussion on the future of the movement that they are creating. Look out for some new and exciting things from them in the future, they are going to dominate the universe one day!! Great guys check out their site, and if your in Amsterdam check to see if WSJ is having a party!

Our second meeting was with the one and only Bicyclemark, who is whipping out some incredible podcasting content with his “Audio Communique” podcast. Check him out, he is a very interesting and a super cool guy. Tonight he is going to do a walking soundseeing tour of the red-light district, should be interesting. We chatted for a few hours and Mark said it best on his blog in reference to our conversation:

“Our conversations have only just begun, but if you had to drink every time we said blogging or podcasting, you’d be getting your stomach pumped right now.”

I am now chilling out at the lovely NH Amsterdam Centre hotel where I discovered (after asking two staff members about if the hotel offered high speed internet access), that there was a blazing fast wi-fi network on premise. Whats funny is that it was branded as NH hotels network specifically. So I figured after a rather stale week of posting I would get things “current.”

Tonight it seems the crew has another night in store, we are heading to Panama at 0000 hours (Midnight), where the dancing will commence once again :-) I look forward to another Saturday night in Amsterdam. Off to London tomorrow. Stay tuned.

2 Responses to “Waking Up In Amsterdam!”

  1. The Trend Junkie » Blog Archive » Hyves 2.0 Says:

    […] n to the US based myspace and friendster, etc but they are on the path of fast growth. On my last trip to Amsterdam back in February they were just creeping up on 60,000 […]

  2. The Trend Junkie » Blog Archive » Hyves 2.0 Says:

    […] n to the US based myspace and friendster, etc but they are on the path of fast growth. On my last trip to Amsterdam back in February they were just creeping up on 60,000 […]

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