Amsterdam was my last city and turned out to be one of my favorites.  I liked it the most because all of the previous cities had an "old city" section of town where things looked historic and in Amsterdam it all looks old. All of the shops, houses, warehouses, etc all had the same look and feel.  The canals made the city different than any we had seen on our trip and I just fell in love with this city.

 

We arrived early in the morning to Amsterdam after a night train.  This night train wasn't as bad as the one before, probably because we new what to expect... and the air conditioning worked.   Upon arrival our first order of business was to find a place to stay.  We had made reservations in Vienna for Prague and Berlin but didn't go ahead and make one for Amsterdam.  This turned out to be a mistake that Felipe constantly bugged us about.  When we got there we called the two hostels recommended by our book only to find them full.  We then tried the tourist information center but quickly found that there were many other people with out a place to stay.  There was a lady that offered us a private room outside of tourist information for 30 euros a night, but we wanted to try our luck with the official tourist info rather than just taking a room from someone standing on the street.  This again turned out to be a mistake.  We waited an hour in line and when we asked someone who had just gotten a reservation they said they booked for almost 50 euros a night and it wasn't very close at all.  Brandon then set out on a mission to track down the lady who had offered us a room before as Felipe and I waited in line.  He was able to track her down, but she had raised the price a little.  It was still better than what we were going to get inside so we took it.  It was a room in a low budget hotel over a "coffee shop."  The room wasn't bad, and it was private so we took it.  It turned out be pretty good because it was very close to things in the city.  It was right across the canal from the red light district, but that didn't bother us.

 

After securing a room we went out to find a bite to eat.  We found a cool little asian noodle place.  There turned out to be many of these around the city, many named "Wok to Walk."  The idea is you pick what you want in your noodles, they fry them up and put them in a chinese to-go box and you eat them right out of the box.  It was awesome! After lunch Felipe had to go back to work, so Brandon and I headed out to see Amsterdam.  We wanted to start with the Anne Frank house, but the line was really long and our book recommended we come back after 6 to save an hour in line.  So we headed over to the Van Gogh museum instead.  The museum was nice, showing many of his famous works.  The only thing I didn't like was that there was only one floor with all Van Gogh.  Then 3 floors of other artist.  I wish they had more Van Gogh.  We made it back to the Anne Frank house and found our book to have been a lifesaver.  The line was completely gone. The Anne Frank house was the best museum we went to.  Having read the book and envisioned what it must have looked like, it was cool to see what the place actually looked like.  Next was dinner.  I wanted to have one nice sit down dinner before we left so Brandon and i poked into a small little candle lit cafe and had a great meal.  We took a stroll through the red light district which turned out to be quite touristy.  We didn't go very late, which we heard wasn't very safe, but at 10-11 it still felt very safe.  It was interesting to see all the prostitutes standing in window waiting for clients. Most of them were standing there trying to entice men to come up, but every now and then you'd walk by one eating a pizza or talking on their cell phone.  I can't imagine there are too many people that would pick the prostitute eating a pizza.  Then it was bed time. It was a little hard to sleep that first night with all the noise coming from the red light district.  We also had a small scare while we were lying there trying to sleep.  Brandon and I couldn't sleep and heard someone trying to open our door!  We yelled and it was the manager looking for "an extra mattress" which he insisted was under one of our beds.  We were able to convince him that it wasn't in there and he didn't bother us anymore, but it was a bit worrisome. I'm just glad we were awake, I would have freaked out if I woke up with a stranger in our room!

 

The next day Felipe was able to join us and we started the day with a canal boat ride.  This gave us a whole new perspective on the city.  It was just an hour and one half cruise through city but neat to see how all the canals connected.  After our cruise we went to one of the diamond manufacturers for a free tour of their facilities.  We got to see how they cut the diamonds, polish them, and them rate them.  They pulled out several different stones for us to examine, including a 57,000 euro stone.  I had no idea what made a good diamond or a bad diamond, and this tour was worth the free admission to find out that.  From there we cruised through a small market just looking at all the trinkets and stuff people were selling.  One of the things I had noticed about Amsterdam was while marijuana and legal, it isn't something you would really notice unless you knew that.  I had for some reason thought there would be pot plants everywhere, stoners going crazy in the streets and flaunted at every corner.  It was nothing like that.  There were several "coffee shops" that sold it, and you could walk by them and smell it every now-and-then, but it wasn't something people flaunted.  It was more of just part of the culture.  There were a few crazies that were walking around singing loudly completely harmless, but I suspect they were on something other than marijuana.  The fact that it was legal really seemed to have no affect on the city as a whole.  Which I found interesting.  I also noticed that when we were walking around at about 10 o'clock it was still light outside.  It was a weird feeling to look at the clock thinking it was about 8 to see that it was in fact 10.

 

My last few hours in Amsterdam were spent walking around, eating some more "Wok to Walk" and some french fries with mayonnaise, and just soaking in the culture.  There were Bikes everywhere and you have to watch out for them more than you do for cars. We took one more walk through the red light district to show Felipe and went back to the hotel to pack.

 

The next morning I woke up at about 6 gathered my bags, said goodbye to my travel companions and hit the road. I had a 10 AM flight and wanted to make sure I was early.  This turned out to be a good thing because all the signs for a flight to Atlanta pointed me to one check-in area.  When I got there none of the automatic check-in machines could find my ticket.  So then I waited in another line for about 30 minutes only to find out I was at the wrong check-in line.  I needed to go to the Delta specific line.  On my way to the Delta desk I passed the line I just got out of.  It was now forever long and had I not made it to the airport as early as I did I probably would have missed my flight.  

 

The flight was horrible. I can no longer eat airplane food since my terrible experience coming back from Brazil.  Just the smell of airplane food makes me sick.  I was in the middle seat and I thought the flight would never end.  When we finally got close to Atlanta we had to loop around for about 45 minutes while a storm passed.  Then the pilot said that we were below the minimum fuel requirements to land at Atlanta and were required to go to Augusta to fuel up.  This took over an hour and when we were back over Atlanta we had to do one more loop.  I was going stir crazy.  We finally land and I was glad to be back in the States.