update from amsterdam.

hi from holland!

ok, now that first email is over and done with, i can tell you whats been going on in the last week.

tash and i caught up with a friend from devonport who'd been over this side of the world for a while on holiday, chelsea king. we spent a great day walking around hyde park, generally catching up and enjoying such a well known outdoor area in london. we saw the diana memorial fountain and took some pics with some random non-english speaking guys as well as spotting a few squirrels. i missed out on going to "the tower bridge experience" with tash and chels as i realized that i had an errand to run back home. i'm sure they enjoyed the history lesson, crypt of the bridge and scary actors running around trying to scare them! (apparently its better and scarier than the london dungeons!).

so, last saturday we re-packed (and yes that does mean that tash and i both ended up with only 15kg in our main packs after tossing out all our annoyingly heavy extra stuff - very glad for the trial run to cornwall!) and headed over to gare du nord (in paris) on the eurostar.
such a quick trip, especially as we forgot to take into account the 1 hr time change, so we arrived an hour before we expected! Our hostel accommodation was right on one of the canals, and is a new "st. christopher's" so we were really happy with our 10 bed, female dorm room. even provided us with towels.

we planned to do a river siene cruise the first night, after taking a look around, doing our best to order food with our limited french words, but we misread the starting point and by the time we arrived the boat had been gone for 10 mins. so we made the most of it and watched the beginning of a small independant film on the side of the canal til it got dark then headed to the eiffel tower to get a good glimpse at night. we got used to the metro system (similar to the london underground) very quickly and were so confident that we even split up a few times in the next 2 days.
the next day we went on a walking tour of paris. it took us (and a few others from our hostel plus random tourists on the street near 'st. michel') past many museums, interest points like notre dame, the bassilique sacre-couer, the new bridge (ironically the oldest bridge in paris) arc-de-triumphe, the eiffel tower, seine river, the louvre, the obelisk...you name it, we saw it. our guide was brilliant and went at an easy pace, stopping to make jokes, tell us some history and to grab some lunch.

after this, tash, myself and another tassie girl from launie (yes, have met more than one tasmanian already!) went to the sacre-couer again, for some photo posing...and to go up to the dome. heard it was the best view over paris, and i don't think that's far wrong! it was brilliant.

after this, tash went back to the hostel and i grabbed some food and headed for another tour with the same tour company. this one focussed on the Monmarte region and took us through much of the history of the bohemian region. i found out much more about van gogh and picasso than i had previously known, and saw some of their haunts, as well as those of hemmingway and amelie poulain! am keen to put some pics up as soon as i can, but won't be in this post.

we left the next day and had our first bus-a-bout experience. stopping at bruge (yes, i gave in and found some belgium chocolate there!) for a quick pickup of other bus-a-bout-ers, we eventually found ourselves in amsterdam, the netherlands. if i loved paris, i surely love amsterdam just as much, maybe more. so intrigued by the history, just spending 2-3 days in each place is almost killing me! i long to come back and explore so much more. never thought that i would be so inspired by the van gogh museum as i was, but i now have oodles of postcards of his work that will adorn my wall on my return.

the night we arrived, we went on a pub crawl, but were very contained (in bed by 1am) as the next day we planned to go on a bike ride/boat tour. it ended up raining so we postponed it and that's when we went to the van gogh museum, walked through a 1km long every day market and ate dinner at a great little tapas bar not too far from our hostel.

today we went on the bike tour, and had a great time. yes, i'm a little saddle sore, but happy for the experience. i miss riding a bike, its really been such a long time since I did it! we leave from here tomorrow (which I'm sad about, but am promising myself a return) and head to berlin for our quick over night stay before we head on to prague for a few days. these will be our longest days on the bus, but to be honest i'm not as frustrated by the journeys as i thought i might be, as we were bound to be tired but because of the forced travel, we don't feel guilty having to stop every few days. we'll definitely have the rest we need to keep going in each new place.

well, that's it for now! take care and keep in touch.