Day 127

My alarm went off at 4:30am and I got a call from Brian to make sure that I was up and getting ready. It was a rough morning as I was still a bit tipsy from the night before. We rang a taxi around 4:45 and headed over to the airport. I was exhausted! We checked in, went through security and then waited to board our flight. Once on the flight I immediately fell asleep and slept the whole flight. It was only a forty-five minute flight. We arrived at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam around ten and got some maps to figure out where we were going. This is a huge airport. We had a bit to eat and then bought our train tickets to get to our hostel. It took us a while to figure out which platform we had to be on and which train we had to take as most things were in Dutch. We were on the right platform at first but didn’t see the train we needed to take so I asked someone. They said we needed to take the number three. Now Brian thought this meant platform three, so we headed up and over one platform. While we were standing there a train arrives at the platform we were just one and says it is going to the city center, which is where we needed to go. I tapped Brian and pointed over to the train. He gave me an “oh” and then we ran up, over and down to catch the train. We made it. The train ride was so nice and quite. It was a double decker train and it rode so smoothly. They were nothing like the trains and subways in New York with all the squeaks and noises. It was about a fifteen-minute train ride. When we got of we headed outside and looked at the map to figure out where we were going. We found our hostel and checked in. We were on the third floor, which was fine, but the stairs were so vertical and narrow it was a bit scary. When we got into our room all the beds were slept in and Brian and I were so confused. We asked someone if the sheets would be changed and they said yes. So we put down our things and walked around for a bit. We then went back to the train station to meet up with Melody, Richard, and Pierre to show them back to the hostel. Pierre and Melody took quick showers and then the five of us went on a free three hour walking tour at 1:15. It was nice and sunny out so the tour was enjoyable. Nothing like the one we went on in Paris, where I was freezing my butt of and could not concentrate on what the guide was saying at all. On the tour we found out why the stairs are so vertical. Due to the marshy land that the buildings are built on in Amsterdam they figured that leaning the buildings slightly forward would help form the buildings sinking. You could also see that most of the buildings were crooked and lopsided from this. OH, on the tour I totally knew someone. His name is Harry White and he used to hang out with my roommate freshman year at Purchase. I only knew him through her so I didn’t say hi or anything, but it was certainly him. I just found it so weird that out of all the places in the world and all the tours he was there and on that tour. Crazy. The tour ended around 4:15 and then we headed back to the hostel to have a quick nap. We all met downstairs at 6:30 and then headed out to do some more siteseeing. We went to a coffee shop and then to a couple of pubs. It was a bit of an early night as we were all still tired from traveling.