Best Western Hotel Bellevue Egmond aan Zee

... We were nearly out of diapers, so I decided to take a quick walk to the market before heading to Centraal Station to meet her. Of course I was disappointed to see that Russ didn't think to leave my any cash, but no problem...ATM in hand, I headed out with the 3 kids in tow. My card didn't work. It seems Russ told the bank that he was going to The Netherlands, but not me. So my card was frozen. And the grocery ...

I found myself taking alot of pictures in Amsterdam of the buildings. The history that lies in the architecture there is amazing. We did all the typical stuff while in Amsterdam. Went to the Anne Frank house but didn't go inside (the line was crazy). My one mission was of course to smoke weed and boy did I. Got my Mom to smoke with me the first ...

... hogwarts feeling. My room is MC 27. It overlooks the two moats and one of the castle's two towers. To get to my room, you enter the Main Castle doors, go up a staircase on the right, and then are greeted by a gorgeous wooden spiral staircase. Then you take a left and are at my door! After getting into our rooms, my roommates and I decided to unpack and get to know each other better. I am so happy to say ...

... of Holland, it was just missing those gorgeous tulips that appear in all the postcards.. Late May is a bit late in the season for tulips, so unfortunately I missed out the tulip fields that I so wanted to see.. poo... next time... As Terry had gotten lost on the way to Zaanseschans, it was about 5pm when we left and decided to go to the cinemas to watch Iron Man.. I guess the 2nd time round is never as good as the first, but I still ...

... the train back to the city, Steve took a nap at the hotel (mostly because he was out late with friends from work the night before) and so I went shopping and sightseeing by myself for a couple of hours. As I was crossing over one of the bridges, I caught the sun set over one of the canals and it was absolutely beautiful. I now know why they say that Amsterdam is considered the "Venice of Northern Europe". As I continued on my shopping excursion, I did a lot of people ...

... without tickets and fined for the journey; luckily the inspector took pity on us and only gave us one fine between the two of us, still that was 30 Euros we'd have liked to keep hold of. When we arrived at Centraal we met up with Joe and Aravind on platform 1 and they led us to our hostel - Shelter Jordan, the same place I'd stayed last year. We checked in (which took about a million years as the young guy working there seemed to ...

... the next year!). Within a week we were settled in to our pseudo home. So far we have really enjoyed exploring and learning about this most socially liberal (progressive?) country. The people are so kind (even to American tourists!) and it's really nice that 90% speak English - the language barrier here is not the problem it's been in other areas. We are especially enjoying our daily bike rides in and around the city.

... quiet ales and a quiet spliff by Matt we searched for some of the cheaper eats in town which, I believe, began to slightly rile our new friend as he got hungrier as time went on, God knows why though??? Eventually we found a small diner advertising cheap pizzas so we decided to head in, only to discover that pizza wasn't on the menu!! After discussing the value of having a kebab instead of a pizza we opted to move only to have ...

... of the root vegetables that they have to be chopped up into saleable proportions. We ducked into Star travel agency to see how we might get a flight to one of the Scandinavian countries. We had envisaged a drive to Copenhagen for a couple of days and on the way visit those camps in which a friend of ours had been interned during the war until I started working out traveling times. It really was not on. Neither was Western Germany. We would be spending all ...

... a pole w/a foxtail in my hand (a baseball-style ball with a long, multicoloured nylon tail, the object being to throw the ball in the air and catch it by it's tail, only grabbing the specific colour shouted out by your competitor - I don't know, I bought it in Vermont, thought it'd be entertainment during my travels ) "What if it's too much hassel for them to get here so they ...