Planes, Trains and British Washers

Well up sort of on time, I swear that alarm is evil.

We cleaned up and were hoping to walk into the kitchen to find a week's worth of clean clothes... do I really need to explain how much we needed these?! Well with the LOVELY British washer/dryer combo our clothes came out completely soaking wet. No, not damp... soaked. We had to ring each thing out in the sink, stuff them in plastic bags and carry all that extra weight over to Amsterdam. Ughhh. Lovely bloody start.

We took a 1.5 hour train to Luton London Airport to catch our flight. Charlie accidently opened the bus doors in the middle of our shuttle to the airport with his backpack causing a lot of confusion. The flight was fine, only 45 minutes or so long. The pilot was pretty funny he said, "the weather in Amsterdam is the same as London, miserable!" Actually it was sunny and very nice. We got into Amsterdam, collected our bags and decided the airport was a rip-off for exchanging our pounds for euros.

We grabbed a train in Amsterdam to the Central Station and then had NO idea how to find our hostel. Our packs weighed somewhere around 375 pounds; so that's a lot of fun. I can only say we are pretty much as cheap as we are stubborn. After countless people told us to take a bus down to where our hostel was we decided to walk. I mean we'd walked for hours and hours and hours in London each day... no big deal right? Well Heather's arms went numb and charlie pretty much lost feeling in his upper back and neck. Good times. We even got desperate and tried to pay a rickshaw driver to take us as far as he could for 6 british pounds... grr no luck.

We took a nice break on one of the many canals and eventually made it to our hostel. I was assured in an email that we could pay with a credit card...oh no - cash only. So with our bags FULL of heavy wet laundry and no euros to be had... off we went to find an exchange place that wouldn't rip us off.

Our room here is very nice, Heather asked what floor we were on and guy at the front desk said "2." I guess that's Dutch for the 4th floor. But on the other hand we are only sharing with two other travelers and we are in the heart of the city.

And why would a laundry place be open in Holland on Saturday or Sunday??? As i type our laundry is hung in every sort of nook and crack in this room in hopes of someday drying.

On the positive side we had a great meal here :) We found an amazing bar called De Saloon. Charlie had a belgium beer and a tasty burger and chips, Heather had baked goat cheese with honey and bacon and a cup of tomato soup. Mmm.

After a small talk we've decided we are trying to do too much in a day. So we are going to try to take it a little easier in hopes of being able to scrape ourselves out of bed at a normal time.

H & C