Day 32 Brussels-Amsterdam
We had breakfast again at the hotel and headed over to the train station, which was a quick 5 minute walk. Only one train today, all the way to Amsterdam. I was pretty excited to see what this city had to offer. We got into Amsterdam and the first thing we had to do was deal with a bunch of lines. The day before had been Queen's Day, a huge celebration day, and there were tons of people in Amsterdam. You should have seen the aftermath of this party. There was orange garbage everywhere! There were Heineken cans all over the streets and silly string in the trees and some deflated orange crowns. It was insane. It's too bad we missed the party, but there weren't any reasonably priced hotels left by the time we thought of it. Maybe next time. Anyways, even though the weather wasn't looking great, a lot of people were outside. After getting a print out of where we were heading (for free out of this info machine that was pretty cool) Trevor knew where we had to go and what tram to take, but we had to get our transit tickets. So, Trevor went to buy some. He had to get a number for the line and figured that he'd get a number for the info line too (who knew there would be lines to get to either?) and we waited for over half an hour until Trevor finally got the bus tickets. Now we had to find where this bus was. Thankfully that wasn't too difficult. After a bit of a tram ride, where we found out you have to scan your ticket when you go in and when you get off the bus, and a bit of a walk, we made it to our hostel. The first two nights we would be in a 12 person room on a double bed (that was nice) and the last night would be in an 8 person room. We climbed the 5 narrow flights of stairs (reception was 2 floors below ground level and we were on the third floor) and waited as our beds were made and then we finally headed out the door to do some exploring. We decided to check out the Anne Frank Haus which was actually really well put together. It was sad. We had to wait in line for a bit to get in, but I figure it was worth it. Then we headed toward the Red Light District. It was still light out and man was it crowded! There were so many people. The Red Light District looked nothing like I had imagined. I thought it was going to be a sketchy back street with all the prostitutes in their windows and the whole "alley" tinged red. It ended up being a huge area around canals (like in Venice) and sure, there were sex shops everywhere and a few girls in the windows, but definitely not like I had thought in my head. Plus, the number of "coffee shops" and fast food joints overwhelmed the number of sex shops anyways. We ended up having dinner at a place called Walk to Wok which was super busy and ended up tasting really good. It was a place where you picked your noodles, the meat and the sauce and they made it for you fresh. Then we walked around and headed to a fair that was going on, checked stuff out and headed back to the hostel. We were one of the first people back in our room. I think we're getting old!
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