Amsterdam in a Nutshell

Last week traveling =( . So sad, not going to think about it! Alright gotta back track a bit...Our last night in Paris we ventured back to the Eiffel Tower and turned out to be perfect timing - the sun was just setting so we got to see the views in daylight, sunset, and darkness. Very cool. The views were amazing and the tower all lit up was pretty sweet.

Afterwards we had our last meal in France and slept early as the next morning we took the 6am train to Amsterdam (thats what we get for not booking trains ahead AGAIN!). Amsterdam was absolutly a change from what we were used to! Everything was in English, everyone spoke English, and everything felt much more welcoming. The city is beautiful and clean and very relaxed. Unfortunatly, when we first got there a thunderstorm started (typical). We had reservations at a hostel and found it in the pouring rain...but when we got there it was a really young crowd and a huge 2 building hostel where one bunk bed was 30Euro so we decided we could find better. We set off in the rain again and were soon quite miserable, cold, and very very wet. And for a good while the only hotel we could find was the Tulip which, thank God, we had read abotu in the Lonely Planet beforehand so we didnt walk right in as its quite a strange hotel that caters to a specific set of gay men.....i wont get into details on what that specific set consists of but it freaked us out a lot!!!

Anyway eventually we found a place (another gay hostel we suspect, but thats Amsterdam i guess) and settled into the city nicely. Its just such an amazing place, totally on a different wave length then anywhere else in the world. Everything is so liberal, like 201312309 times more thasn Canada. Everywhere you go there are coffee shops which sell weed and where people smoke but also in resteraunts and other places there are people smoking weed like cigerettes! So strange to see. And they have so many gay oriented things. Even a monument for all the gay people killed in the second world war. They also have public urinals all over the city! And everybody rides bikes, EVERYBODY, which makes walking every difficult as you somehow always end up in a bike path and dont notice until someone is ringing their bell at you and muttering about the tourists. We loved it so much but knew we had to get on our way as we wanted to see Normandy, France before heading up to London. Well of course we once again waited to the last minute to book our trains....and everything was sold out. Sweet. So we pretty much got stuck in Amsterdam but it worked out beacuse Pat, who is in germany working at the moment, decided to join us for the weekend. We had soooo much fun and walked the entire city, including the Red Light District which was another crazy part about Amsterdam. Its such a strange, strange place. The hookers kind of look like zoo animals behind their windows, its so wierd. We also went on a non-profit boat trip around the canals and saw a lot of really cool things like the smallest house in the entire city (SO thin!) and the red light district during the day.

(beside the green awning is the small house)

Amsterdam was so awesome but we had to continue on. We spent some tiem in brussels which was pretty boring and then took a high speed train to London where Cam met us at the train station. Now we are staying at his 'flat' and so far its been so wonderful. Nice to feel like we are at home again! So many pictures already but I better go because Cam wants his computer back and Ive been on it forever.....