Amsterdam/Antwerp/Overnight Train

So, as you can tell, I am behind a day. Trying to hurry up and put in two entries before we go watch the Germany-Turkey game tonight.

We woke up very early because the check out for our hostel in Amsterdam was at 930. After checking out and grabbing some of the breakfast, we went to the train station to lock up our bags and then do some more Amsterdam sight seeing. Our first stop was this windmill on the outskirts of town. It is also a brewery, but that was not open.

The map that we had also recommended a cheap open air market place that was nearby, so Mia got excited and we had to go. It was fun, and compared to the other stuff in Amsterdam very cheap.

To appease Andrew, we circled around and passed by the Amsterdam zoo (couldnt really see much) and the outskirts of the botanical garden. We walked through the red light district again and then out to a cafe. At the cafe, we kind of decided that we had seen everything that we wanted too (Actually I would have liked to see a couple of museums but no one else was with me on this one, of course). Anyway, we ended up leaving Amsterdam 6 hours ahead of schedule. We used this time to visit Antwerp, another city in Belgium.

Antwerp is or was one of the big fashion capitals of Europe. Hipster central, for sure. Also is a big place for diamonds. Anyway, we wandered around the city for a while. Saw the big Cathedral, the main square, a big fortress, walked along the river for a while. It was completely relaxed compared to the very, very, touristy Amsterdam. We spent a while looking for this statue of some kid mooning someone, which we found out had been taken down recently. We ate dinner at some cheap Italian place and then went back to the train station to wait for a train to Brussels.

We got into Brussels around 9, which is actually 30 minutes earlier than we would have gotten into town had we gone with our original plan. I guess thats cool. Spent the next few hours waiting around the train station for our overnight train. While waiting, Mia and I found this GIANT vending machine supermarket. It was really cool.

Train came in around 1141 as it was supposed to. We got in and found out that we did not get sleeping cars as we had expected (the Paris train station lady booked this, of course and didnt give us the option to choose anything else. The only thing that makes me think it might be different on the next train is that we have one ticket instead of four. I dont know if that actually makes a difference though). It was hard to sleep and kind of uncomfortable, but I slept better than I thought. I will write about the rest in the next post.