Just getting caught up with my journaling....it's been a very busy few days.

Matt and I had our typical jet lag response, a 5am wake up! Having been through this before, we just went along with it. We quickly got ourselves up and out for a sunrise walk of Amsterdam. It was so different to see the city free of cars, bicycles, and tourists! The only people we came across were stumbling partiers, making their way home from the nightclubs.

We were determined to make the most out of our short time in Amsterdam, so we walked all the way to the museum district and got in to the Van Gogh museum right as it opened it's doors. The museum was beyond incredible, with so many of his most famous paintings. Matt was enjoying it so much that I decided to capture a photo of him taking it all in. I didn't even consider that this might be a problem, because photos were allowed throughout the museum. I was quickly approached by a museum staff member who was quite irritated with me and told me to delete the photo...Matt just happened too be standing in front of one of the only paintings in the museum with a 'no photos' sign beside it. Whoops:)

The rest of the day entailed the typical hurried pace of a travel day...checking out of hotel, figuring out how to buy train tickets, and eating on the go. We had to transfer trains two times in order to get from Amsterdam to Geleen, the village where Sarah and Tim live. We were a bit nervous about our first transfer, as we had just 3 minutes to change trains. Sure enough we missed our train. No big problem for us, because the next train came in a half an hour. A bit worrisome for Tim and Sarah, who were quite dismayed when we didn't get off the train as expected. We were actually still waiting for a train at our second transfer when we saw Tim and Linden walking up the platform. Tim had figured we must have missed one of our connections and came to find us. Linden looked pretty shocked and shy at first, but soon warmed up to us, although spoke mostly in Dutch:)