Bastion Hotel Leiden

Another early start saw us catching the bus at 8.00 a.m to travel to Amsterdamse Bos. One of the largest city parks of Europe, a planned forest, Amsterdamse Bos spans around 1000 hectares within the local authorities of Amsterdam, Amstelveen ans Aalsmeer. We received a presentation from Remco Daalder, firstly on the historical planning of the city, and then on the park itself. Remco showed a plan of Amsterdam in the 1500'2 and then want on to describe how ...

... and a general good time. About 11:30 several of us decided to head out to brave the masses and experience the party outside. Kit wanted to go dancing “with his people” (aka a gay bar), so Luz and I agreed to accompany him over for a bit. On the way however, we made a stop for Oliebollin. Oliebollin are like donuts, but about 1000%-times better!! Deep fried balls of dough rolled in powdered sugar, all hot and sweet. YUM!!! They come ...

... be the dormitories for an all woman's college in the early 1900's. The building Webster occupies across the canal from the apartments was the woman's college. And between these two buildings?.....that would be the abortion clinic! Um..... Oh, and apparently the public hangings took place across the canal from our housing. Fun!<br><br>3) In a lot of my pictures you will see huge sailing boats. 2-masted HUGE boats, I have a great view of several of ...

... life into some semblance of order. I found hangers AND a French press coffee pot!!! You have no idea how excited I was. Now I just need to buy coffee and I&#8217;m set. I also found the Aldi&#8217;s store! Cheep food. I can&#8217;t believe I&#8217;m about to say this, but I am actually getting sick of pasta, but its cheep, and the veggies never look very good. There is apparently a farmer&#8217;s market on Wednesday&#8217;s and Saturday&#8217 ...

I flew from NYC to Dublin (on Aer Lingus - which was a lovely flight - my first time on a large airplane). Then I got a connection in Dublin. There were numerous things that I was suspecting to go wrong...Irina (my roommate from my law school) and I had planned on meeting at Schipol Airport because our flights were supposed to arrive within 5 minutes of each other. I frankly ...

Once we arrived in Amsterdam, we managed to find the tax free cashier where we got a refund of 170 &euro;, considering the amount of stuff we bought! We then took the train (where ...

... map was helpful indeed. It showed us that our hotel was...on the complete other side of town! Wonderful, now what? The city transportation system, which is known as the tram, was a couple blocks down so we decided to try that. However, by the time we figured out just how the tram system worked it stopped running for the evening. Should we walk, most likely not the best idea (and as we later realized way too far to ...

... a canal, complete with backup singers and of course, a case of Heineken! We emailed it to ourselves, so if anyone is interested... HOLLA! Afterwards we checked out a couple other museums and sites, then just took it easy for the rest of the night. On Friday morning we had to switch hostels, so by the time that was sorted out we had built up enough courage to... rent bikes! We had been told that the ...

... all day. I went to town at H&amp;M - lots of cheap clothing! I was exhausted and de-hyrdated after a long day of walking and needed some juice and water BADLY. While in line at a grocery store, I saw the most gorgeous Dutch hottie standing in front of me. Definitely Spanish-quality! I would've said something but I kept tripping on my tongue and slipping on my drool. After that it was back to the hostel for a shower (a ...

Today Marj and I returned to Amsterdam where we met up with Becky and Niki to show them around the city for the afternoon. Tomorrow we head to Africa and it's all we can do to keep our mind on Amsterdam and Europe. It was essentially an uneventful day. The biggest memory is trying to find somewhere to unload my camera memory card. It was so easy in New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia and ...