On Friday morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn in order to make our first train from London to Brussels. Unfortunately on our way to St. Pancras station we didn’t get to go to King’s Cross Station where the famous 9 ¾ platform is :( When we arrived in Brussels, I immediately started to smell something delicious next to our platform… I followed my nose and stumbled upon heaven… Belgium waffles. Nom nom nommmm! I couldn’t convince myself to get the Belgium Waffle Dream (which includes two waffles, two scoops of ice cream and chocolate sauce) at 9/10 AM, so I settled for just one waffle and it was perfectttttt! I suggest everyone try one at least once in their life! We caught our next train from Brussels to Amsterdam and arrived at about 3 PM.

 Once we made it to our hostel (which was basically a hotel and was sooo nice!) we grabbed a snack, took a quick nap and met our friends at their hostel down the street. Since they already had been there for a day they showed us a restaurant nearby called Pancake Corner that had UNLIMITED ribs for 10 euros! Perfect! But they get you because they don’t serve tap water and a bottle of water is 6 euros…. And a sprite is 4.80 euros!!! So ridiculous! For the start of the night, we wandered around to all the bars looking for a good place to go.

 Let me just say— Amsterdam is an interesting place… Overall. It’s a beautiful city, with pretty buildings and canals throughout the whole city, but the all of the restaurants, some stores and some hostels in the city smell like weed all the time! And personally the smell of weed does not bother me, EXCEPT for when I’m slightly hung over, it’s 10 AM and all I want is just to eat breakfast!!! Not to mention all of my clothes smelled SOO bad after the trip and I had to come back and wash everything -_- But oh well! When in Amsterdam, right?! Another interesting factor of Amsterdam was almost everyone we met was very, very rude! Customer service is non- existent and people are just completely disrespectful (one of the girls on the trip was even KICKED by a bouncer at one of the clubs…)! It was such a change from London and especially Dublin where we met some of the nicest people in probably all of Europe! Anyways, after people practically begged us to come into their clubs (which was kind of strange) we ended up only finding one club/ bar that was pretty fun! After dancing the night away (some people slept it away at the bar hehe) we finally decided to call it a night.

 The next morning we slept in … again… when we finally managed to get ready and go explore it was already almost 12:30 PM… oops! We first went to the Heineken Experience at their factory. I personally thought it was SO much better than the Guinness tour. Even though you had to pay a little more money, it was worth it. The tour was a lot more interactive and they still taught you all the information you needed to know. And at the end you got 2 free beers instead of 1, which worked out for me because I like Heineken better :) After the tour we went to the I Amsterdam sign and took the traditional tourist pictures in front of it! We also stopped by the Van Gogh Museum because that’s one of the most famous things to do but I was so disappointed when I got into the museum when I realized that two of his main paintings were gone! They are sitting in a gallery in Philadelphia -__- But it was still cool to see his other works! Unfortunately we didn’t have time to make it to the Anne Frank house, but I heard it was a really cool tour, even though you didn’t get to attic. Hmpff.

 That night we went to an Irish pub for dinner… of course! After we wandered around the city grabbing “treats” for the night :) Another thing you have to learn about Amsterdam is that coffee shops are not like Starbucks… that’s where you get your weed and cafés are where you get your coffee! We then made our way to our friend’s hostel again for a while before I started feeling sick from dinner so I went home with some of the other girls. Womp womp.

 We had originally planned on taking the 8:04 AM train home, and OF COURSE we are all woken up at 8:06 AM by Lindsey screaming “WE MISSED OUR TRAIN”…. Oh perfect. Luckily there was a 10:30 AM train, so we threw all of our stuff together and made our way to the train station. We enjoyed an 11 hour train ride all the way home to Lugano… which included five different trains -___- . Let’s just say… I have never been happier to see the Montarina before, let alone my bed…. Whew what a journey! My tip for people next year or anyone taking a 10 day trip like that—get your beauty sleep before because it’s nonexistent on something like this….

 Until next time!

Xoxo,

Katie