"astublieft don't arrest me...dank u!"

Okay, I'm back. Sorry I've been a little behind on my travel updates, but sometimes typing up several days' worth of adventures seems a daunting task, and then I tend to procrastinate. Story of my life.
So I finally got across to continental Europe last weekend, and it was fabulous! We only spent a few hours in Bruges, but there's not too much to do there other than walk around and see the general prettiness of the town, so a few hours seemed to be enough. We also went into about five different chocolate shops. And then we got back on the coach and headed to Amsterdam. (We also watched In Bruges on the trip...I was the only one who laughed at the Tottenham joke.)

(These two shots are of the same building, I just couldn't fit it all in one frame.)

We got to our hotel in Amsterdam around 8:00, and had a half hour to go unpack and get ready before going out with the trip guide to buy public transportation tickets/have a walking tour/go clubbing. Buying tickets for the trains, trams, buses, etc. was kind of a nightmare. I'm really not impressed with the city's transport system. But it got us where we needed to go (eventually), so I guess it's not totally useless.

Clubbing in Amsterdam is fun, although drinks are super expensive so you either have to buy cheap booze from a grocery store and drink it beforehand, or go sober. Although as a girl you can always wrangle a few free drinks out of people. Also, don't wear a dress if you go dancing, unless you want drunk guys putting their hands up your skirt. Not so fun.

But they played lots of Spanish music (including Juanes and Ricky Martin! And the Macarena, no lie) so we all had a great time. The next morning we woke up early, had a delicious free breakfast from the hotel, and headed to Edam.

This town is really pretty, although I wouldn't want to live there. Far too quiet...except for the hot naked man in one of the windows of the houses we walked by. I didn't see him but other people filled me in. But anyways, Edam is famous for its cheese, so of course I had to buy some. Smoked goat cheese, to be specific, and I've been eating it all day today. So good.

After Edam, we got back on the coach and drove to Volendam, a town on the coast.

It has a cool old windmill that isn't actually in use anymore, but people still go to take pictures of it. Because what's a trip to Holland without a windmill?

We then walked around by the water, ate some ice cream even though it was pretty freezing out, and looked in the souvenir shops. Then back to the hotel to figure out what to do in the afternoon--we decided to do a canal tour of the city.


After the tour, we had been planning on going to the Van Gogh museum (especially since they have a special exhibition at the moment and have The Starry Night on loan from the MoMA), but we were kind of exhausted by this point so we just went back to the hotel to freshen up before going out.

[Random side note: Raul almost caused me serious injury on Saturday night. Or at least moderate embarrassment. We were getting ready to go out in the evening, and were waiting down in the hotel lobby for the rest of the group to show up, when we decided to check out the hotel bar area. I was leading the way, and to the left I noticed that they had the Real Madrid game on a big screen TV. Probably because of all the Dutch players. Anyways, cue a Raul closeup...I had my eyes on the screen, wasn't looking where I was going, missed two full steps down, and fell flat on my face into the room. To add insult to injury, one of the bartenders came over and asked disapprovingly if we were already drunk. Usually you see people falling OUT of bars at the end of the night, not tripping INTO them in the evening.

Embarrassing story interlude over.]

So again, we stayed out until all hours of the morning dancing (also walked through the red light district...interesting stuff...) and again didn't drink much but it was still tons of fun, and again woke up early to see as much of the city as possible. We were going to try to fit in the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank's house before we had to leave, but ended up doing neither--lines were too long at the Van Gogh so we ended up going to the Rijksmuseum instead. It was still very cool, lots of Rembrandts and Vermeers. But I'm definitely going to have to go back to Amsterdam again someday to do the touristy things that I didn't get to do last weekend.

I know this was a super long post already, so I didn't go into all of the drama that happened with the actual group--let me just say that I now know why American tourists have such bad reputations. I can't even believe the idiocy levels of some of the people on the tour with us. But anyways, all in all it was a very good trip.