Amsterdam: Back we go!

June 28th to 30th

Meghan and I headed back to Amsterdam after being in Stuttgart. We had some friends from home joining us, and it had been cheapest for them to fly into Amsterdam, so we agreed to meet there. Besides, Amsterdam was a fun city - why not go back? The others - Brendan, Geordan and Kailey - were arriving on the 29th in the morning, but Meghan and I decided to head to Amsterdam the day before to make sure that we would be there already when the others arrived. We caught a train out of Stuttgart in the morning and were supposed to arrive in Amsterdam around 1:30, but one of our trains was late so we missed a connection, and wasn't able to get to Amsterdam until a couple hours later than planned. Once there, we headed off to the hostel (as per usual), which was where we had stayed the first time, making it easy to find! Benefit of going back to a place you've already been: its easier to find places the second time without having to look at a map!

The rest of the afternoon and the evening were pretty uneventful for us. We hung out at the hostel for a bit, doing some things like printing off our boarding passes for our flights (we were flying to Ireland next!), and responding to emails and whatnot. In the evening, we wandered around the city centre for a while, but as the evening passed, the sky got darker. Not wanting to get caught in the rain, we headed off in the direction of the hostel. But, unfortunately, being only a block away from the hostel, it started pouring! Within the few minutes left to get back, we managed to get completely soaked. So, what to do when completely drenched and safely back in the hostel? You would think the logical answer to that question would be to change into dry clothes. Wrong. Have a beer! Which is exactly what we did. We just hung out in our lovely wet clothes and had a beer at the hostel bar.

The next morning, we repacked our stuff as we were going to stay in another hostel with the others, and went to the train station to meet the others. We got there, and waited, and waited, and waited, and no friends... Waited some more.. Finally, about two hours after arriving at the train station, the others arrived! Yay!! More travel buddies! Not that I don't love traveling with Meghan, but its always fun to have a big group of people to travel with. The day was pretty uneventful - checked into the hostel, grabbed some lunch, relaxed for a bit in the hostel since the others were tired after their flights and lack of sleep, dinner, some drinks at the hostel bar and of course a stroll through the Red Light District. No trip to Amsterdam would be complete without that experience!

The next morning, we took a bus to Eindhoven, where we were catching our flight to Dublin from. Nothing too exciting that day, other than we were off to Ireland, a place I've wanted to visit for a long time!