Amsterdam

Day 10: Bruges to Amsterdam 

Big travel day! Our train to Antwerpen Centraal left Bruges at 11:17a.m. We had a 45 minute layover in Antwerpen. Grabbed some lunch and quickly walked outside the train station. From right outside the station, we counted 24 diamond stores! 

Got on our train with reserved seats and power outlets! We started playing "Heads Up!" with a group of travelers from London. Very entertaining! 

We arrived in Amsterdam at 2:45p.m. Still had the whole afternoon and night ahead of us!

Checked into our 37 Euro hotel room! Major score! I booked it 3 months in advance on one of their discount hotel website. Cheaper than a hostel and much nicer! Great location too. 

We walked around Amsterdam. The concentric canals make it a very easy city to navigate. Saw the major town square where they actually had a beach volleyball tournament set up. Very cool! Walked through the Red Light district. A rather interesting place. Bought some new tennis shoes along the way. My feet are finally happy again! Ended up going to dinner at Walk to Wok. 

Connor and I registered our itinerary with the US Department of State. So we get messages about the major happenings of the places we are going to. We got a message today (picture below) that pretty much gave us our plans for the night. And they were GREAT plans! The best part was that Museumplein was only 5 blocks away from our hotel! We bought some beer and ice cream to take to the game. However, we had to quickly drink and eat our snacks with the hundreds of other people who had the same idea before they would let us into the viewing area.

We got to cheer on the Netherlands to victory with the masses! What an experience! Every time the Netherlands scored, the crowd went wild!! I walked over to grab beer for us when they scored the second goal. This one guy threw his cup of beer into the air. And the next thing I knew I was in the air too! The guy just picked me haha We had such a fun time! The Netherlands scored 5 goals! The final score was 5-1. What a party!

We recommend making a trip to Europe or somewhere in the world where soccer is taken seriously during the next World Cup. You won't regret it!! 

Day 11: Amsterdam

Checked out of our hotel but stored our backpacks there for the day. Found a place to wash our clothes...well we just dropped them off and picked them up 3 hours later (washed, dried, and folded!). Time is money! Especially while traveling.

We enjoyed a relaxing day in Amsterdam. Had some good food. Walked around quite a bit. We walked over to the Anne Frank House. The line was crazy long to go inside! So we settled for reading the English museum guide to remember her story. 

We got to the train station at 5:30pm for our 7pm train...

Day 11 (night): Amsterdam to Prague

Our train experience started off by the man at the information desk telling us to go to the international service desks because of problems with our train. Then the international service desk told us that we were supposed to get on the train at the normal time but then get off at a city an hour away so they could bus us to a city in Germany where we would get on the real overnight train. Well that ended up being false information. Good thing too! It would have been a 3 hour bus ride!!

We waited by the international service desks to see if they would give us any new information...and they gave us a lot of new, untrue information. A good sized mob of angry customers heading to Prague formed. At least they had to deal with all of us. Connor and I made friends with two Aussies, Cienwen and Vivien. We made a pack to stick together. Definitely made all of our trips to Prague more enjoyable!

The four of us were in the same boat. Cienwen and Vivien bought the "true overnight train experience", a 2 person sleeper car where you have a personal shower and they bring you breakfast. And we did too! 

That did not happen for any of us! Instead we got a very different experience and hopefully a refund! Ultimately, they shoved all of us going to Prague into the last train car with straight back seats and fluorescent lights. We spent 9 hours in this train car. The four us passed the time by sharing stories, playing UNO and phase ten, drinking wine, etc. we definitely made the most of it! Cienwen and Vivien are great! We're lucky to have gotten to know them!

At 4am, we got to Berlin. They unattached our train car and put it on a different train. Cienwen and I made sure the entire train was going to Prague and we set out for new sleeping arrangements. We found two cabins with 6 seats each and more legroom  next to each other and grabbed them. We all got 3 seats to sprawl out on for the next 5 hours to Prague. 

Somehow we made it on time to Prague! The four of us grabbed some much needed coffee and breakfast together then said our goodbyes. Hopefully, they'll come visit us in Texas someday!