Friday, June 29, 2007

Day 12 Amsterdam - Brussels

I headed to work to finish my last day here and Kevin slept in... When Kevin woke up he tried to retrace his steps from his tour with Diane yesterday. He was able to find the flower market, Rembrandt's house, Leildsplein and the flood memorial. I met him in Dam square at 3ish. We were going to try to go to the Anne Frank house. The line was around the corner and we didn't have the patience for it.... Next time... We then did part of the tour Kevin had done earlier in the day, so I got to see the flower market, Begijnhof and the Beguines (a relgious sect of nun-like women), we walked down Kalverstract and the Church of St. Nicholas. Our plan this afternoon was to take the train, direct from Amsterdam, to Brussels. We found our train and took over a "quiet" section of one of the first class cars. When the train stopped at the airport we learned there had been an accident on the track to Antwerp (on the way to Brussels), so we had to switch trains, go back to Amsterdam and get on another train for Brussels. We got lucky again and was able to take over a "silent" section. Eventually two guys joined us (as the rest of the filled up. Eventually we ended up in Rosendaal, where everyone on the train had to get off and switch trains. The problem was that the next train was already full (and we are pretty sure it was the last one going to Antwerp/Brussels). There was some confusion around whether there was another and what to do. Turns out they quickly decieded to send the train we just got off (which was supposed to be at the end of its line) to Antwerp and send the new train to Brussels, so we crammed on to the Brussels bound train. We ended up sitting on our bags between the cars, (good thing we bought first-class tickets huh?) once it stopped in Antwerp and let some people off we were able to grab a couple of seats. We finally made it to Brussels (about 6 hours after we left Amsterdam the first time). We grabbed a cab to the hotel and checked in...

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