Shark Tales: Amsterdam and Brussels

Amsterdam

Amsterdam has been one of my favorite cities so far, and no not because of the legalized marijuana and the red light district. I had never really seen pictures of what Amsterdam looks like, so I had no real idea of what to expect. I was surprised at how beautiful the city is when I got here. So many very cool looking buildings running along canal streets, it is very similar to Venice in that aspect. We went to the Anne Frank house which was a very cool experience, they had a cool exhibit there regarding freedom of speech, press, religion etc. Then we just walked the city, saw the Van Gogh museum, the Rembrandt house, and walked through a very cool park. More than anything about Amsterdam I just really enjoyed walked the streets and experiencing the city. We then took a night train to Brussels.

Brussels -

We got into Brussels around one and again to save money decided to crash on the benches in the train station. At around two in the morning police men yelling in French came and woke all of my homeless friends and I up, so I figured they were closing the station as they had done in Venice. Not until I was outside did someone who spoke a little english tell me that if you had a ticket you could stay inside, by then all the doors were locked leaving me outside for the next few hours. Something I learned on this trip is that you meet some of the coolest people sittin outside of European train stations in the middle of the night. I talked with two girls from Lituiania for the next couple hours. It was interesting to hear from them about what things are like in their country and hear the questions they had about america. We also bonded over our mutual love for Arvydas Sabonis. When the train station opened back up we went inside to get some waffles and use the internet. The internet was pretty much worthless though because of how slow it was and French keyboards are way different than what I was used to. We then waited for our train back to England. I am now in Cambridge and it is absolutely amazing. I really am living at Hogwarts. The campus is unbelievable. I love walking into the college where there are lines of visitors trying to get in, and I just walk by the porters and flash my pass. Classes start tonight and we leave for Scotland this weekend, so it will be a very exciting week. I will try and take some pictures of the college tonight and post them tomorrow, also I will work on my first installment of youreuropebasedson (My mom's website is yourhomebasedmom.com) later today. Following in the footsteps of my mom I took pictures of all of my favorite foods I sampled while travelling that I will share later. Here are some pics from Amsterdam.