Amsterdam

So, I've given up on making clever titles to my posts. However, I will say that I have like three songs on my iPod with the name Amsterdam. Uploading more photos to webshots.

Anyway, we've safely arrived in Amsterdam and it's a pretty different pace from Belgium. It's a very pretty city and I love all the canals, but it kind of reminds me of Las Vegas...maybe more like downtown Vegas. Also, it's kind of very cold and windy here, so I'm glad we packed a lot of summer clothes.

Our train for Amsterdam didn't leave until 12:15, so we had a more relaxing morning than usual. We couldn't find any water anywhere last night, so I think we all woke up somewhat dehydrated. I think that's why Mia woke up at like 7:30 instead of 8:30 when the alarm was set to go off. Me, I slept as long as I could. We went down to eat around 9:30 and loaded up on a lot of free breakfast foods because we had a long train ride ahead of us. We went back upstairs to finish packing and checked out around 10:30. I really liked this hostel with the exception of the bartender, so it was kind of sad leaving this one.

We got to the train station around 11:00 and I regretted not getting tickets for the 11:15 train to Amsterdam instead of the 12:15 train. Whatever, we just ended up sitting around for the next hour reading, listening to music, or (in my case) planning out what we were doing in Amsterdam.

The train came on time. I think it's about the same distance between Brussels and Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam, but this train took 3 hours because it stopped at a few cities along the way. It gave us ample time to nap and relax, though. All good.

We got into Amsterdam a little after three, but had to go back to the ticket line because we finally got yelled at by one of the conductors about Gianni's Eurail pass. He called the French people dumb for not telling us to get it replaced earlier. Anyway, we had to wait an hour to do this, so Mia and I left Gianni and Andrew around to wait while we checked into the hostel. We got lost on the way because I somehow lost the map that I had of Amsterdam, but these two really nice souvenir store owners helped us find our way. The stairs up to the hostel are very small and narrow and I'm kind of scared about what it's going to be like going back down those stairs with the big backpacks.

Anyway, we had just enough time to throw our stuff down in the room and go back out to the train station and made it back with a few minutes to spare. We managed to replace Gianni's Eurail pass, but could not book any of the other tickets that we need to book. This is kind of stressful because I'm tired of standing in the ticket lines and we have one more overnight train to book. We'll figure it out.

Anyway, we were done with this around 4/5, so we went and had Gianni and Andrew fill out the information at the hostel that they needed at the reception.

After that, we went back out. Gianni was really excited about this store that we read about called Hemp World, so that was our first stop actually. It was a pretty cool store, but REALLY expensive, so I didn't buy anything.

We wandered around for a little while. This city smells like pot, the scent of which is especially strong whenever you pass by the coffee shops. It's kind of crazy.

The Italy and Spain game was tonight, so we decided to hold off eating a big meal, instead grabbing some random stuff on the streets, and then went off to walk around the city some more. I wanted to see the Red Light district, and thought that Andrew would enjoy that as well, but I've been very disoriented in this very crowded city, so we kind of circled around for a while. We did end up seeing the big square and some national monument. They were holding some concert/carnival there. The band was okay. Nothing spectacular, so we moved on.

We started an epic hunt for the red light district, where Mia almost got pickpocketed and we circled around the same streets for a while. We eventually got there, and I think it disturbed Andrew a lot. We wandered around for a little while longer and ended up chilling out in some square where I think they have some big market during the day. On the way to the square, Mia decided to take a picture with this old guy who was sitting on a couch in the middle of the street shouting "Russia." It was kind of awkward and he told Mia that he was the first man to do heroine. I don't know. It was near what I assumed to be like the Chinatown of Amsterdam or something. We'll figure this stuff out a little more tomorrow.

After that, we started wandering around, trying to figure out how to fill up the hour and a half before the game. This ended up just being endless wandering and eating falafel at a place that way overcharged us for our water.

After eating, we sat down at some Irish pub to watch the game, mostly because we could see from outside that the bartender was rooting for Italy. Ended up we were in a bar full of Spain fans. Anyway, we just saw them lose and I think my brother is now depressed. The people at the table next to us were smoking a LOT, so now I smell absolutely disgusting. It got so bad that Mia and I had to leave for a while in the middle of the game.

Um, that's about it for today. Tomorrow we plan on exploring the city some more, maybe going to the Van Gogh Museum. I want to go see the Anne Frank house, but no one else seems to want to do that. We kind of want to bike since this city is crazy about biking, but after having been nearly killed by many bikers, I'm kind of terrified of the idea. We'll see what ends up happening. This city does not seem to be very nerd-friendly, though.