Buh-bye Amsterdam...Hello London!

Yesterday we got up at 7:00, quite a task for two girls who didn't get to sleep intil after 2 am. But we sucked it up and were even ready with time left to eat breakfast. We ordered a cab to take us to Centraal Station and went to our room in Amsterdam one last time to retrieve our bags. After a short wait in the lobby the concierge informed us that our cab had arrived. A tall lanly man with a big nose, bald head and two hoop earrings in his long ears greeted us and lifted our bags into the car. Although we were both silently agreed his appearance resembeled that of an insane meth addict we climbed into the backseat. After all, we certainly were not going to walk to Centraal Station and our bags were already in the car. Acting on impulses by running away from our potentially crazy taxi driver wasn't worth losing our next 2 weeks of clothes. Our suspicions were confirmed within minutes of the drive. The trip consisted of many sudden stops, without which we may have ended the lives of about a dozen pedestrians and bicyclists. Then a thought occured to me-you'd have to be a bit nuts to drive a car in Amsterdam. I don't know the exact figure, but there must be at least 10 times more bikes than cars in the city. The average Amsterdammer owns 3 bicycles. As for the rules of the road regarding pedestrians walking or biking, there are none. We did run into some crosswalks which people would obey if cars were coming. As soon as the coast was clear, the road was fair game. Upon this realization, I became much more appreciative of our drivers insanity and seeminly eratic driving habits. The opposite may have caused us all quite an inconvenience. As we arrived at Centraal Station, we both quickly got out, breathed a sigh of relief that we had not been witness to vehicular manslaughter, and thanked our driver. As we were dragging our luggage to the station, Christina pointed out another testiment to the reign of bicycles as the preferred method of transportation in Amsterdam: a 3 story parking structure filled to the brim with rows upon rows of bicycles.

We caught a train to the airport and, after a few stops, arrived there with plenty of time to catch our flight. Christina wandered into the Souveniers of Holland gift shop where she spent 20 minutes picking out gifts and the last of her Euros.

We breathed a sigh of relief that we had not been witness to vehicular manslaughter

We boarded our flight and used the next hour to play electronic Sudoku and listen to stand up of David Cross. We enjoyed the flight as it was much smoother than the last one we have taken.

Our arrival into the London Heathrow Airport was right on time. We picked up our bags and headed out to catch the Heathrow Express. The Heathrow Express is a train that goes directly into Central London's Paddington Station and from there we could catch another train that would take us to Bayswate, where we hoped to find our hotel. It was during this experience we discovered a rather irritating fact about London's tube stations: there are no lifts. We had to haul our luggage up and down about two flights of stairs. And then do it again. It was exhausting, to say the least. After consulting our map numerous times, we finally found our hotel, Somerset Bayswater. It's on a quiet street about 2 blocks from Notting Hill. We chose this particular place to stay because they advertised apartment-like accomodations complete with a kitchenette and complimentary laundry facilities. We had originally reserved a studio "apartment" but when we checked in we were told they had overbooked the studios, so we would be upgraded to a one-bedroom. Sweet! We walked to our room-which included about a dozen more stairs, and were quite happy with our new home. If you recall, the last we stayed didn't even have a complete ceiling. Our place here in London had not only a hole-free ceiling, but a nice kitchen area (with cookware and utensils) a living room (and TV with 15 English stations) a bedroom, a super fancy bathroom and 2 clocks! (I don't think we had mentioned previously that clock was one of the "comforts" we were denied in our Amsterdam Hotel. No matter-now we have 2!) Despite the much higher quality of our London Hotel, it is still quite a bit cheaper than our place in Amsterdam was.

We took a nap and woke up around 5 pm. We ventured out to Notting Hill in search of a restaurant and grocery store. During our exploration of the neighborhood we discovered tbat within three blocks of our apartment there was a McDonals, Burger King, KFC,  2 Starbucks, and a GAP store. Although we had seen both McDonalds and Burger King in Amsterdam, we had managed to miss Starbucks. I guess there's just some things we'll never escape.

We ended up at Mark and Spencer's. a grocery store recommended to me by a co-worked who had recently visited London. We bought snacks, fruit, water and some ingredients for a dinner sometime in the near future. On our way back, we stopped at a nice italian restaurant, Zizzi, for dinner. I ordered fuseli and spinach with gorgonzola, and Christina ordered a pizza. The description of her meal included "baby spinach, cheese, olives, egg, and tomato," Christina logically thinking the egg would be hard boiled and chopped. Imagine our suprise when her pizza arrived with a single fried egg plopped near the middle of her pizza. The look on her face was priceless! At least next time either of us ordered an egg pizza we'll know's coming.

We finished about half our meal, and after waiting about 45 minutes for our bill, took the leftovers home with us. We spent the rest of the evening writing, relaxing, and watching CSI. It was quite nice.

We went to bed around 2 am and woke up this morning, refreshed, around 11. We are planning on doing very little today other than finding an internet cafe (there is not one here in our hotel-boo!) and going to a Fall Out Boy concert later on tonight. Fall Out Boy is one of Christina's favorite bands and, by pure coincidence, they happen to be playing in London while we're here. As I'm sure you can imagine, Christina is quite excited and we've been listening to the music of Fall Out Boy for the past few hours. I'm also excited for the show-we haven't seen much in the way of nightlife during our trip so far.

It's going to be another late night and we'll let you know how it goes in our next blog.

Thanks for reading...miss you all!

Jessica and Christina