Before I even get to talking about Amsterdam, there is quite the story to be told about our train ride there....
Since we weren't able to get the night train we wanted, we had to take a series of three trains, the first to Basel (1 hour), the second to Frankfurt (~3 hours), then to Amsterdam (4 hours). We were due to arrive at midnight. We had emailed our hostel to inform them of our late arrival and they said it would be no problem. Well everything was well and good, until our second train had a slight delay, and we only had 20 minutes in between trains, so we didn't have much time to be delayed. Well, I shouldn't have been worried about the delay, because one stop before Frankfurt, the train BREAKS DOWN. Can not move, we are stuck there. The station is trying to make everyone arrangements to get where they need to go, and the stewardesses suggest we go to the next major town, Cöln, and take a bus the rest of the way because there aren't busses running. We go speak to the people at the station helping people, tell them our stewardess suggested this, and his laughs and says absolutely not it will take you like 12 hours to get there. He goes to his computer, tried to find us a solution, and our only option is a series of 7 (yes, seven) trains that will put us in Amsterdam at about 2:45 AM. The kicker, though, was that two of our breaks were only 5 minutes long, so if one train was late (which they always seem to be) we would be stuck in a random little train station with no information booth to help us find a place to stay or anything and would be sleeping in the station until the next train at 5:30 AM. So our options were to stay in Köln, or go for it. We decide to go for it, and we for once lucked out. We kinda flirted with the train conductors a little on the ones we absolutely couldn't be late on, and we ended up at one of them catching an earlier train they didn't think we would make, so we made it to all of our stations with plenty of time, hallelujah. We arrived right on schedule at 2:45 and got to the hostel about 3, on the walk there observing some interesting individuals, one of which felt extreme compelled to kiss my arm as I walked by with all my stuff, but no matter he was harmless. We arrive at the hostel after a short walk, it said the door was a gate and we could not find the darn hate because it was dark. We finally found it and buzzed the bell. The door opened to reveal nothing but a steep red staircase that was literally a ladder. It was straight up and down and we didn't fit in the stairwell. We had to go up one steep flight to the check in desk, where the guy was hushing us for being too loud (dude we were stuck on the stairs you should have helped us). We told him our name and tried to check in, but he told us we could not check in until 2pm and because everyone was sleeping we had to leave, but we were more than welcome to leave our luggage. WHAT?! Where did he expect us to go?? Sleep on the streets of Amsterdam in the red light district I don't think so!! We even emailed and asked if we could check in late, granted it was later than we said because our train broke, but they said it didn't matter what time because they have 24-hour reception! And you're going to make us sleep on the streets?! When we already paid you for the night there?? Ohhh I was livid and have him a piece of my mind, it worked though because we ended up in our beds. Now we're no fools, we know there's very rarely AC in Europe, we just haven't encountered a place where it was a problem yet. Well, here was a first. Because we went up so many darn flights of stairs the air was so hot, and there was no fan or open window to circulate the air so it was miserable. Waking up the next morning we were drenched in our own sweat it was so disgusting, luckily we were only in those sheets that one night. Everyone in the room was still sleeping so we quietly tip toed around getting ready so as not to wake them. Right as we were getting ready to leave and check out, everyone was awake, and we found that we had shared a room with an Italian couple and large burly German guys that hardly spoke any English. They looked at us like "what are you doing here" since we arrived after they were all asleep, offered us some of their breakfast that we very easily declined, then we were on our way. We went to the desk to turn in our key and check out, and this marvelous 24-reception the hostel has wasn't there! And there was no bell or anything so we just had to wait there for like 10 minutes for him to come back. Ugh he was just mean and horrible and the place wasn't great either I was so excited to leave. We went immediately to the hostel we would be staying in for two nights, normally you can't check in that early but our beds were empty so they let us in. We were able to lock our stuff up in our lockers since the people had already checked out, then we got to actually begin enjoying ourselves. That hostel was right in the heart of the Red Light District, the part with the bars and clubs though, a street or two over from the prostitutes, and heavily populated with people so we felt super safe unlike the sketchy place we were the night before. Check in took way less time than we anticipated so we were able to catch the morning tour by New Europe and didn't have to wait until the afternoon which was great. Our tour guide's name was Larz-Hendrick and he was just so great and funny. Our tour was nice and long with a lunch break in the middle, where we were able to get tickets for the other events hosted by the company. We decided to do a bar crawl because well, going out is kind of the thing to do in Amsterdam and better in a huge organized group then alone right? Plus it came with a free t shirt and drink specials so we couldn't complain about that. Larz also told us about the company's bike tour, and he would be the guide on it the next day. Bikes were THE form of transportation there, and he was a great guide, so we had to sign up. We completed the tour having seen basically everything Amsterdam has to offer and becoming quite a bit more oriented with the city. We decided to go to the Anne Frank house after the conclusion of the tour, and that was awesome. Very sobering yet very very cool at the same time because things are exactly as they were when they were there, which is crazy! I was sad to see that some of the important docs, like her diary, were replicas because the originals were in other exhibits, but nonetheless I'm so glad we went. When that ended we had just enough time to go back to the hostel to freshen up and drop off our stuff, have dinner, then go to the bar crawl which started at 8 at a bar called Players which was very conveniently right next to our hostel. We had an interesting dinner. I asked the waiter which item on the menu he likes best that was Dutch-ish, and he suggested a pancake. Now we're not talking a breakfast pancake, it was like pancake batter but super super thin (think a huge crepe) topped with spinach, cheese, and ham. It was served with powdered sugar and syrup, it was so strange! But surprisingly tasty. We got done a little earlier than expected, so we just decided to meet at the bar early. We were basically the first people there, but that was okay because we made friends with the hosts and the bartenders. One bar tender pretended to offend me by playing "Barbie Girl" since we were girls and wanted 'girl music,' so I jokingly yelled at him, and as his apology he gave us and the boys next to us free shots. As people trickled in we met lots of people. We were of the very few girls there, so it wasn't hard for us to make friends. We met people from all over the US and some friends from Australia, and while waiting in line for our tickets, we met kids from UF! How cool! Our first global gator friends. What was even cooler was that we have many mutual friends so it was as if we knew each other already. We hung out with those boys basically the whole time, well we were with our whole little group of friends we made, but mostly them. We took a gator chomp picture in from of the red lights from the Red Light District, so classy (the cover photo for this blog post). On the crawl we went to 5 bars and one club, and at 3:30 everything began to shut down (so much later than the states). Luckily, the club we ended at was about 7 doors down from our hostel so getting home wasn't a problem (we couldn't have lucked out more with that place! Except maybe if the bathroom facilities were better, boys and girls shared one and it was kinda always dirty but we lived). We slept in a little the next day before heading to our bike tour at noon. We could not find the meeting place because it said train station and that's a huge place, so we thought they weren't coming. We found the bike rental and waited outside for a while. 12:05 Larz finally shows up, I guess the meeting point was a little way away so everyone was there and we weren't so woops. At least we got on the tour. We rode all around Amsterdam, and while some things were the same as before, we also learned a lot of new different information and saw some new cool things, plus by bike is just different all around! We went back to our hostel after the tour for a little freshening up, then decided to take it easy because we were tired, and just visit the bar downstairs associated with the hostel because they advertised a special on something called a skittle bomb and it sounded cool so we decided to try them. It was quite delicious and we made friends with the bar tender (always a good idea, then they watch out for you with creepy people and stuff). We decided to wander around and grab some take away good. We explore the red light district some more, get some Doner Kebabs for dinner and waffles for dessert (mine was coated in chocolate and it was soooo good!). It was a little too early to go to bed so we decided to go back to that bar, because it was a bit more populated now. We ended up sitting next to some girls from Switzerland, got to chatting and just having a good time. One of the girls got up to go to the bathroom and accidentally knocked the table, sent her friends drink flying onto the floor and shattering the glass. We all jokingly applauded because it was a total accident and just funny, but of course she was embarrassed so they decided to leave. We told them they had no reason to be but they wanted to move on so we let them go. Some guys at the next table had extra seats and offered them to us since our table was now covered in beer, so we sat down and got to chatting and they were pretty cool. They wanted to go to a club, but we couldn't find the one they had read about, so we showed them the one we had been to the night before. We decided to stay, because when in Amsterdam, right? Instead of going to bed like we had planned because that's boring and YOLO. We had a great time meeting lots of cool new people, but we didn't get back til super late and basically didn't sleep at all. We had to be up at like 6 to get ready and pack before getting on our 8:34 train. We did it, though groggy, and made it to the station about 8 AM. We had time to grab some breakfast from the little cafe store there then headed to our platform. We checked with information and she said it was 10B. We then on our way passed the ticket booth, so we stopped in there to last second check if they thought we should get a reservation (most trains are completely free with the Eurail and don't require reservations, though some do. If they don't, you can make them anyways for a very small fee to ensure you have a seat, because if it's full you would otherwise have to stand). She said it was early enough there shouldn't be a problem with seats, and said to head directly to 11B. Well, this contradicted what information told us, but we figured it was closer to departure at that time plus she's tickets so she might know better? Well we go up to the platform, 10B and 11B are right next to each other. 10B has a completely different train, and 11B has Berlin, but it's departing 5 minutes later than ours and is going to a different Berlin stop. There was a note in German about our stop at the bottom of the sign and I asked someone to translate it for me, it said 'not going to Berlin HBF' which is where we needed to go. We showed her our train info and she said she had no idea where it was, but they were different types of trains so even if we got on the one not going to that stop, it's a slower train and would take us twice as long. Well none of that works so I head back to information to ask her, inform her of everything I was told, and she assures me don't worry it's 10B. Okay.... I go back to the platform and there are about 10 other kids with the same problem as us. The train comes and none of us know what to do, so we finally find a conductor guy and he basically says this is what you're getting so get on the train. We double check even though it says a different train and a different time, this is still our train? He says yes, so we go ahead and get on. Let's hope for the best, because Chiara (a friend of mine from UF Cheerleading who lives in Berlin and is attending medical school there) will be waiting for us in Berlin! Luckily it's one train the whole way, so our options for getting screwed up are limited.
It was great, Amsterdam, even having avoided your coffee shops we had an excellent time!