We started the day by heading up to Islington on the bus to eat at a vegan indian buffet that Anna really likes. It was really really good, and I was so busy eating that I forgot to take a picture, so I took one of the outside of the place instead.
After lunch we saw a crowd gathered down the street, along with one tv camera so we stood around to see if anything would happen and happen to hear some random dude ask another random dude who everyone was waiting for and the other random dude said "Barack Obama!" and when the first random dude showed that he was very skeptical about that the other random dude said "well, Michelle Obama then!" and the random dude basically laughed in his face and walked off. We decided it wasn't worth wasting our time over either, so we headed toward some shops and a park that was decided to take a nap in.
The rest of the day was kind of a blur. Anna had some errands to run before going to her little sister's birthday party so Amy and I wandered around Camden and tried to find something interesting to buy at H&M since we don't have one in Denver, but didn't really find anything. After we met up with Anna at her house to say goodbye we headed to the train to get to the bus station in time for our bus to Amsterdam.
I didn't get a chance to take any good pictures of our bus or the driver, but he was a crazy scotsman with a very sarcastic joking personality. He had his 8 yr old (around there anyway) son with him and their dynamic was hilarious. Even though the bus line is supposed to be a greyhound type coach that was travelling over night, they carried on the whole drive as if they were on their own road trip, listening to hip hop and rap and horrible pop music somewhat loudly while randomly singing along to parts. Very humourous when we weren't trying to sleep.
A quarter of the way into the trip the driver brought to our attention that instead of taking the ferry across the channel like the brochure said, we would be taking the chunnel from England to France and would be arriving a lot earlier to Amsterdam than we thought (he even said 4 hours early at one point) putting us in so early that we wouldn't be able to take public transportation into town or check into our hotel.
The Euro tunnel is a very weird experience. Our bus driver "told a little white lie" and said that we had a disabled person aboard, so we were put in the front of the line of buses which I was ok with because I took a really awesome video of:
I will put the video up as sonn as it uploads...
After we completed the 45 minute trip under the channel we arrived in France and were quickly in Belgium where we traded between sleeping and petrol station breaks and stops at bus stations in Rotterdam, Haag, and finally Amsterdam as the sun was coming up.
We were pretty much delirious when we checked into the hotel and found a random bagel shop to eat at before sleeping till 2:30 in the afternoon then heading out to rent bicycles and meet up with our friend Rachel whom we met in Chicago last summer at a really awesome windmill brewery called Brouerij't (the beauty of the dutch language!)
The beer garden was completely full so we took our drinks and cheese over to the canal and watched all the leisurely boaters while catching up with Rachel who is in Amsterdam writing her thesis.
All the beer and chilling out and chatting made us hungry so we made our way over to eat Roti which is a kind of south american/indian/asian cuisine that we had never heard of. It was pretty spicy and the dish I got had a lot of bones in it, but overall it tasted really good
After dinner we rode to Rachel's other favorite bar Zotte and I drank a Maerdsous. I like being out here because I get to try a lot of beers from here that are normally much more expensive at home but are almost laughably cheap in Belgium/the netherlands.
Finally we headed to a kind of squat/hippie commune/vegan kitchen/venue/art gallery to meet one of Rachel's friends from Mexico who had art on display but it was very crowded and a bit strange there, not to mention we were all pretty tired, so Amy and I headed back to the hotel to try and get some sleep so we can head to the Anne Frank annex tomorrow and meet back up with Rachel and her friend who is flying in as well.
We miss you all and hope everyone is well.
cheers!
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