Hello All -

The Monday we returned from Prague, our friend and former suitemate Helen came to visit us at the castle for her spring break. We had a lovely time hanging out and that weekend we went to Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam - just walking around the city gives me a sense of peace and happiness. It has its wild side but it's also serene and beautiful when you are walking through little neighborhoods with canals and such. While on our first night's adventures we discovered a great little restaurant that had the most delicious lasagna I've ever had (other than my father's obviously.)

We walked around a while longer, exploring one of my favorite cities is something I'll never get tired of, and stumbled upon a shoe store where Laura FINALLY bought a new pair of sneakers. Our entire trip has been Laura looking for sneakers, she was supposed to buy a pair when we were in Boston before we left but that didn't happen. So with a new pair of kicks, as she calls them, we went back to the hostel. We sat in the bar with a bunch of other travelers and shared stories and played jenga. We got hungry so we walked over to McDonalds and got delicious french fries. I have a new appreciation for McDonalds because it's cheap and you know what you're going to get. I won't be eating it when we get back from Europe though.

The next day we decided to just walk around and shop for a while. All of the adorable little stores in Amsterdam make me so happy. We eventually ended up in a vegetarian restaurant where we had the most delicious sandwiches. It was hummus and sprouts and peppers and was maybe the most delicious sandwich I've ever eaten - this could also be because I was craving hummus and can't wait to go back to the states and eat it. Around 3 we left for Rotterdam - or we left the neighborhood we were in to go to Rotterdam, we didn't catch the train till much later because we decided to walk to the Station and that turned out to be a long way. We arrived in Rotterdam at about 8pm which made finding food problematic. Eventually we found an Italian place with really good pizza and pasta and a waiter who used to live in NYC. After dinner we all went to bed because we were exhausted.

The next morning I decided that I didn't want to check out Rotterdam after reading guidebooks with Helen at breakfast. It just didn't sound interesting to me so I decided I was going to go to Bruge instead for the afternoon.

See my next entry for my Belgian adventure!

Be Well

Natalie