Spice Girls...COME BACK!

So it was Amsterdam and Brusssels this weekend, and minus a few setbacks it went pretty well. Nothing really happened during the week, I'm having problems getting into my classes but other than that I was just waiting to go on the trip.

So the night before we had decided to meet down in the dorm lobby at 4:35am because there was a tram leaving at 4:50am, well me and lauren didn't get to bed until late but we usually don't get to much sleep. I guess we must have been tired or something because all of a sudden Lauren's phone rings and I look at my clock and the first thing out of my mouth is..."Why is it 4:40????" It was 4:40am and Megan was calling us to tell us they were leaving. Well THANK GOD we packed the night before because I've never gotten dressed and out the door so fast in my life, we made it there before the tram did, but that's probably because the tram never came. We had the wrong schedule. So we had to take a taxi to the airport which let me grab a few things I had forgotten upstairs. We took the taxi to the airport and went to the wrong terminal. Lol. But the other one was in walking distance so it ended up being fine. So we finally got on the plane and thats when the sleep deprivation set in, because up until then I had been running on adrenaline from waking up late, but now I was exhausted. When we got into Amsterdam we took a train to the center of the city and pretty easily found our hostel (flying pig) we were in a room with 10 other people...and co-ed bathrooms. Just amazing. Lauren and I showered right when we got there because we felt gross and had been planning to shower had we woken up on time. lol. Then we started our day. First the Anne Frank museum. It was unbelievable. It was the house she hid in all those years and they had kept so many things. It made me so sad, but it was so interesting. I LOVED it, definitely worth going to and waiting 2 hours for. Then we went on a canal tour of Amsterdam, which was beautiful. Amsterdam surprisingly (at least to me) is such a gorgeous city. However, sleep deprivation also set in while sitting on the boat and I believe I dozed off a few times and so did Claire who was sitting next to me because the French couple next to us was laughing. Anyways, after that we went to the Van Gogh museum which was fantastic. Only a few of us went because it was pretty expensive but it was well worth it. I saw Starry Night (the original and the second one) I saw a lot of his self portraits, the sunflowers, the Almond Blossom, the Potato Eaters....any famous painting of his you can think of it was there. There were 3 floors dedicated to him. This museum had most of his collection. And there was life jazz music and a cafe, we were there for nearly three hours. Then we decided to leave because we were all hungry (me corey caitlin and claire went to the museum). When we called the other girls they had already eaten so we decided to go to this Ethiopian restaurant we had found in a tour book. BEST FOOD EVER! I dunno if it was because I was eating with my hands or drinking bear from a coconut bowl but it was the best meal I've ever had. So much fun. We had lamb and chicken and all kinds of stuff, and we ate it all with our hands lol. I loved it. It got pretty late after dinner though so we had to head back to the hostel to meet the other girls to go to the REDLIGHT DISTRICT! We met up with them and these two guys (dave and rider) that were staying at our hostel and who had already been there so they could show us around. The redlight district was amazing. It was insane. I didn't know why it was called the redlight district until we got there either. The girls dance in rooms with glass doors and redlights above their doors and wait for people to come in and then they shut the blinds and that is that. lol. It was ridiculous. I saw so many guys doing intense walks of shame. lol. Then we had a few drinks and decided to call it an early night because we had Brussels the next day and we wanted to have breakfast and shop. 

The next day we woke up and went to breakfast (which they don't really have in Prague so it was pretty amazing) and I got an omelette for the first time in a long time. Then we went shopping and I bought a few souvenirs and we decided to leave for Brussels. And here is where the trouble starts. We had split up into two groups in my group it was me Lauren Caitlin and Megan and the other girls were taking a later train, because we had booked ahead of time. So we get to the train station and we had booked TICKETLESS tickets. So we thought we didn't have to print anything out because we don't have a printer. Well, of course, we were wrong. So we try to check in and this lady wants a paper, and we tried to explain TICKETLESS, she didn't get it. Then we asked her if she could print it out for us...negative. She was not helpful. So we went to the train platform, and this little train worker man figures out our problem and does everything he can to help us (granted we got there with like 15 minutes to spare so we were running a lot at this point) and he goes back to the lady...no help...talks to the conductor who then talks to another guy who gets another guy who comes to us and tells us...we're good. lol. If were in the system we're fine. So we get on the train and it ends up being ok, plus the best train EVER. We got the most comfortable seats and free drinks and snacks. I felt like I was in first class. When we got to the station in Brussels we thought we would wait for the other girls who were supposed to be on another train coming later...so we waited..and an hour later we were still trying to get a hold of them and finally they picked up and said they had just gotten to the hostel. So then we had to get to the hostel, and we took the taxi ride from hell. I've never been more scared in my life. I had to sit in the front seat and this guy was like going 90 miles an hour and getting on everyone's tail even this poor motorcycle guy, he got like right up to his back wheel. I was freaking out, and then of course I see the only car accident I've ever seen in Europe on the side of the road so obviously I feel way better about the situation. The driver then started to notice that I was freaking out, and he didn't speak any English but he was laughing the entire. Super cool. He started doing things to make me nervous on purpose then too. When we finally got to the hostel we all decided to go out and walk around and get dinner. We went to this Thai restaurant and went and bought some chocolates =) SOOOoooo good. And then we got our first experience with what we would like to call "Little Italy". There is this long narrow street in Brussels that has probably has about 25 restaurants on it. ALL Italian. And the owners stand in front of the restaurant and try and persuade you to come in...incessantly. And they all got a kick out of us, 7 American girls with no intention of eating there, and all we could here was "Spice Girls! Come Back!!" or "I will give you all my money! Come back!!" It was pretty insane. Then we decided to visit this bar called Delirium that we had looked up before we left, and they have 2,004 types of beer. So crazy. We got there and obviously it was packed (both floors) so we stood in the corner and waited til we could swoop a table. In the meantime we tried some of the beer. STRAWBERRY BEER IS AMAZING! It tastes like strawberry sprite. I mean its got like -1% alcohol lol. Actualy I think it had 2.5% but it was so good. And then I had peach and that was great too. I tried mango and coconut and blueberry and their own Delirium beer (all of these besides the peach and strawberry were other's and I just tasted lol don't worry). It was a lot of fun, but we ended the night rather early because we were all exhausted and wanted to get a full day in the next day. The next day we went to the main square and went and saw Mannequin Pis which is looks pretty much how it sounds. It's a sculpture of a baby boy peeing, its like a fountain thing I guess. I guess its pretty famous, not exactly sure why, it has something to do with that being a gift to the king and stuff I dunno lol. Then we had the most amazing waffles EVER, from this yellow bus guy who saturated them in maple syrup and I just loved it. Then we headed to the flea market with our waffles. The flea market was really cool. It was this open square where people just sold ANYTHING. It was like a giant garage sale. I bought this really cute green change purse, and a polaroid camera which I need to order film for, but its super cool. Then we headed back to the hostel because Megan and Corey and Lauren and Ruby needed to catch their plane home. We napped and then went out to dinner in little Italy, which was an interesting experience to say the least. Even after napping we were tired, and we headed back home early so we could catch our plane the next morning. =) 

Next stop. Paris. 

<3.