Day 23 - Amsterdam

Surprise trip to Paris!  Hopped a train, and in a few hours, I was in the city of lights eating chocolate croissants.  Just kidding, I didn’t really go, but believe me, I was this close!  I decided not to go outside of my Benelux pass, and instead returned to Amsterdam.

The first thing I did was go to the Anne Frank house, which I had missed out on last time.  It was a moving walkthrough of the secret annex with excerpts of Anne’s diary describing how they lived there for two years.  Then I met up with my travel buddy Jessica and showed her around the main sites of Amsterdam (by now I have figured my way around).  I took her to the cheese store I went to earlier, but a group of Russian tourists ate all the samples.

We wandered until it was dark so Jessica could see the Red Light District, then went to the train station to spend the night in Antwerp.  When we searched for our platform on the screens, we couldn’t find our train.  We asked at information, who laughed at us and said there were no more trains to Antwerp until 5:46 the next morning.  We were confused, then realized that we (rather, I) had read the schedule wrong.  The train we were trying to catch only ran on Saturdays!  We were bummed and stuck.

We skulked out, debating our options.  We eventually decided to get a hostel, maybe sneak the two of us into one bed, and get a decent night’s sleep.  Within a block, we changed our minds.  There were a couple of guys next to us at the intersection struggling with a map.  I have been hearing stories on the ship of how people with no plans and no lodgings just meet locals and stay with them.  Why couldn’t that be me, I thought.  I approached them and offered help.  They were a friendly pair freshly arrived from Luxembourg trying to find their friends.  Surely they had a hotel or something booked already.  We helped them read their map and waited for their friends with them.  Their friends showed up, a group of guys and a couple girls, also from Luxembourg.  We didn’t get invited to stay with them, or even to join their plans, but they were friendly enough when we did anyway.

We followed them all the way to a coffee shop.  Note the distinction between a café, a place that sells coffee, and a coffee shop, a place that sells coffee and marijuana.  We hung out with them until my eyes turned red and my head hurt from all the smoke (both weed and cigarettes).

Suddenly my pocket started vibrating and I picked up the call from an unknown number, surprised that my phone could even receive calls.  Sasha’s friend Igor called and invited us to a party.  We couldn’t stay with Sasha, but she apparently pitied us and called up her friends.  Igor said his friends would meet up with him later, and maybe one could offer us a place to stay, but he wasn’t sure yet.  We took him up on his offer and sat down to drinks at an outdoor bar.  I ordered an iced tea (sparkling!).  Lucky for me, Jessica had the energy to stay awake while I promptly napped on Igor’s shoulder.

I may have slept for an hour or two and woke up just before Igor’s friends arrived.  We stayed until the bar closed, and when they took away the table candle and turned off the heat lamp, it became too cold to keep sitting there.  Then we started bar hopping, but only because the boys couldn’t find a decent place.  Either the club was sold out or too full or had a Michael Jackson theme that night or had too high a gay-to-straight ratio or what have you.  It started raining, so they finally settled on a bar.  There were very few girls; all the girls were in the clubs we couldn’t get into.

With my nap and Jessica’s insomniac superpower, we were able to survive the night until 5 am.  We had to leave for the train station, and the group was breaking up anyway.  We were all saying goodbyes when one of the guys came up to us and said something along the lines of “Well girls, we have an extra couch if you need a place to stay…”  Bastard.

Igor walked us to the train station, saying that we were lost and going the wrong way and that we would miss our train.  I knew where we were, but Jessica believed him.  Jessica and I got on our train and fell asleep instantly.