July 14-July 16- AMSTERDAM!

Mindy, Ashley, Paul, Mark, and I decided to go to Amsterdam for the weekend. We left early Saturday morning because of the concert and class in Leuven Friday night.  It took almost 5 hours to get to Amsterdam and the train was packed, so we were sitting in a cramped area between 2 train cars.  It was really uncomfortable.  Our hotel took us a while to find, and it looked kind of sketchy from the outside.  Each room had a different movie theme.  We were in some room about a Princess..  I had never heard of the movie.  We had a hot pink room with 4 twin beds, and 5 people.  We took a long nap at the hotel and slept until almost 8pm. We then went out to check out the city.  We got this nice, free map with tons of things to do.  We bought tickets for the following day for a night cruise and the Ice Bar.  We went to a coffeeshop and explored Amsterdam nightlife.  We ate dinner at a really good steakhouse. Everywhere closed around 2 am and we were back in the room by then.

Paul and I got up Sunday and were last 2 people to get on the bike tour, operated by Joy Ride Bike Tours.  Larae’s website recommended the tour.  They only take 15 on each tour and they were fully booked.  However, 2 people didn't show up so we got to go!  The tour started at 10:30.  We met the group back at the hotel around 3:30.

Upon leaving the hotel, we met Walter, Scott, and some other person from Texas. Together, we walked over to the Heineken store, AJAX experience, flower market, etc. We went to the ice bar at 7:30.  We wanted to eat at this huge Chinese place, so we went in and got seated.  It was very expensive.  We planned to get to the 9:30 river cruise.  Nobody at the resteraunt took our drink order, and it was late, so we left!  We stopped at Wok to Go on the way to the train station/cruise and it was delicious.  We went out that night and possibly met Colonel Saunders grandson, Mike.  He just graduated from Georgetown, is from Louisville, and is studying in Prague.

We checked out of hotel around 11 am, after eating breakfast.  Walked to Anne Frank house, but line was absolutely ridiculously long and we did not feel like waiting.  We walked back to train station and caught 12:46 train to Leuven.  We got back to Leuven around 4:00.  Cooper texted me saying they were close to Leuven, and they were at the dorm when we got back from the train station.  We walked over to Solo Mio, a pizza place.  Cooper’s trip sounded amazing and Dad said he had a good time.