Day 10

Well we made it to Amsterdam! When we woke up in Utrecht after a decent nights sleep, our first move was to check the weather. It rained so much the night before accompanied with thunder and lightening. The prediction for the next 3 days was 30% chance of rain with a 97% chance of cloud coverage. After an interesting breakfast of something that looked liked pancakes, we left the hostel to go explore the city. We were pleased to find that there was zero cloud coverage and the sky was beautiful. But that really means nothing in the Netherlands. We walked around the city and saw some of its churches and main squares and spent some time around the canals. The city was nice a small and compact so we finished pretty early. Instead of moving on to the next city a little earlier, we decided that it would be nice to have some relaxation time. So we went back to the hostel and spent the next 2 hours watching TV and eating all the free food that we could (not that the selection was anything inspiring). We checked out and headed back to the train station. After a quick ride to Leiden, we were still excited to see clear skies. We walked into the city and I have to say that it was beautiful. 20% of its inhabitants are students at the University of Leiden which makes it a very college town. There were so many shops and places for cheap food. This was my kind of city. We walked towards the remaining refugee castle, but sadly, like many things on our trip, it was under construction. We walked along the canals and through many of the shops and decided that we should take a canal tour. For 7 euro, we got an hour long tour of the city, which was really relaxing and informative. It's hard to believe that in the 1600s there were even more canals then there are today! All of the streets used to be canals, but were filled in and paved over when the times started to change. It was very beautiful and relaxing. I may have even dozed off for a few minutes... We left the canal tour in search of food, and we found it. 10 lumpia (egg rolls) for 2 euro! Very tasty. After our lunch/snack break we walked through the city some more and stopped in some of the parks the enjoy the views. We headed back to the train station and were soon in route to Haarlem. With the skies still clear, we were hopeful for the rest of the day. We arrived in Haarlem, and other small city in the Netherlands and spent an hour or so walking around. The great thing about these cities is that everything is so close so you can see all of the main sites in a short period of time. We stopped by the Corrie ten Boom house, the place where many Jews hid out during the second world war. It was very inspiring to learn about how this woman put her life in jeopardy for complete strangers. We saw some of the churches and the main city square which was very busy at this time of day. We relaxed a bit in the park before heading back to the train station to go to Amsterdam! After getting off a stop early and having to wait for the next train, we finally made it to the city. It has such a different feel to it because it's so big and industrialized. But I was excited. We stopped by the hostel to drop off our bags before heading out again. We walked nearly 3 miles round trip to sign up for our canal tour but stopped at a grocery store to pick up some dinner. Sandwiches! Again. Oh well. After our dinner we had 10 minutes to walk to the neighboring hotel for our Red Light District tour. But sadly, we made a wrong turn and ended up running with 1 minute to spare. We made it just as the tour was leaving. The tour started off at the old stock exchange building and we got a quick history lesson on the city of Amsterdam. It's called that because in the 1600s they dammed the Amstel river. We made our way towards the seedier part of town and stopped by many of the famous coffee houses, which do not serve coffee. We saw the window that Quinten Tarantino stayed in and wrote Pulp Fiction. We walked through the 3 main streets that the prostitutes worked on. It was interesting and uncomfortable all at the same time. I'm glad I was able to see it, but I don't think I'll be going back to that section of town again. It finally started to rain towards the end of the tour, but thankfully it wasn't too much and stopped rather quickly. After our tour finished, we walked back to the hostel and headed straight to bed. But unfortunately at 2 am, many of our roommates decided to have a very loud conversation and take multiple pictures. Hopefully tonight will be better!!! But I have a nice relaxing tour today so it should be good, even though there's a 30% chance of rain.