A few new countries
Well, we said “adios” to Spain and we’re now in Amsterdam. We’ve done so much in the past few days it’s unbelievable. When we got off the train in Amsterdam yesterday we figured out that we had actually been in three countries within a 24-hour period. That’s nuts if you ask me, but it worked out fine.
Saying goodbye to Barcelona was nice. Once we left the air immediately smelled fresher! We barely did get out though. Why is it that we are constantly running for trains? If it’s not one thing, it’s another. We had about 5 minutes at one point to get a train from Catalunya station to the Barcelona airport, and we still had to buy tickets and sort out which platform we needed to get to. We were behind this tiny little Spanish woman who was being a pain in the neck to the ticket person. She was taking absolutely ages to get what she needed, and we were standing behind her glancing at our watches and casting glances to the monitors to see how much time we had left. Finally the woman gets her ticket and moves away and we start getting our tickets. Then, when Kelly finally gets up to the window to get her ticket, the stupid old woman comes back over, shoves her way in front of Kelly and starts to berate the guy about something else. Kelly turned to the woman, waved her hand in front of her face and screamed, ever so politely, “Senora! Un momento por favor!” That did the trick, and the woman wandered away looking a bit scared. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen! We did make our train on time though, which is what really matters.
We took the train into Brussels and got there around 10:45. We had planned to take a taxi to our hotel, but when we found out it would be 60 euros, we decided that was a bit steep. Our hotel didn’t have a shuttle, so we tried to find another hotel’s shuttle to take us to our hotel. That didn’t work. All the while, shady looking guys kept coming up to us asking if we wanted a cheap taxi. Never fear moms and dads, we are not stupid enough to have even thought of accepting (you’ve taught us well). We tried everything, but in the end we sucked it up and took the taxi. He didn’t know where he was taking us, but we got there all right in the end to Wavre, Belgium.
The next morning we had to take a train in to Brussels from Wavre. I even got to use the French that my mom taught me (not quite in the intonation that she uses, however). We walked around the city, seeing the sights and eating the most delicious waffles I’ve ever had in my life. It was a rather quick trip, but we were all so tired that we didn’t mind getting an earlier train than we planned and so we headed out at about 5:30 to Amsterdam.
We got in last night and found our hostel, which is actually one of the nicer ones we’ve stayed in. It turned out to be a Christian run hostel, which works out nice because they will be punished by the Lord if they try to rip us off, so the prices are considerably cheap. Amsterdam is really beautiful; it is the prettiest city thus far if you ask me. We went out walking last night along the canals and saw a lot of the old city, and it was incredible. Everyone here rides bikes and the whole city has this healthful, pure aura about it. Except, perhaps, for the red light district, which we also ventured into last night. We got quite an education in the span of about ten minutes, let me tell you. We just had to see it for ourselves. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for sending me to college so I don’t have to dance around behind windows.
Today we’ve just been walking around mostly. We saw the Anne Frank Huis, which was incredible. We’ve got a bit more to do today and tomorrow before our train leaves for Berlin tomorrow afternoon. This trip is going so quick at the moment…only 7 weeks left!
Tags: Amsterdam, Belgium, Brussels, Netherlands, Netherlands, Spain, Travel
Administrator
Leave a Reply