Day 31 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - July 4

We arrived in Amsterdam on July 3rd to find our hotel somewhere in the red light ditrict very near to the train station. We booked this hotel because of the cheap price, though we would have prefered to be outside of the red light district. It turns out that it is a very safe part of town. The funny thing about our hotel is that the check in was at the bar attached to the building, we walked in with all of our bags amongst a bunch of drunk people. Tonight all we did was explore a small section of the area we were in and sit down to have a drink and a pizza at an outdoor restaurant so we could people-watch. It was...interesting.

July 4th turned out to be a rainy day so we decided that we would take a canal tour of the city instead of doing the walking tour we had planned. The canal tour took us all around and gave us a good idea of what Amsterdam was all about. After the tour, the rain let up and we went online to find Taylor's cousin Patrick who is in Amsterdam studying. We found a "coffee shop" that also housed some internet computers and we experienced some locals relaxing with the delicacies that make Amsterdam famous. After the internet and 2nd hand "coffee" we went over to a cafe called cafe Luxembourg that the New York Times nominated one of the worlds great cafes. We ate a dissapointing dinner in which only part of our meal was brought out and we had to argue to get the rest of it. We'd like to have a word with the NYT. After dinner, we picked up some Heineken at a grocery and went in search of Patrick even though we only had the street name and no number; pretty much a shot in the dark. We saw some buildings that looked like dorms so we approached some students nearby who had never heard of Patrick's program but pointed us closer towards the school. We approached another group of people who looked like students and two of them had actually heard of Patrick and knew what room to buzz on the door, truly a miracle. In the end, Patrick was in his room and we hung out with him for a bit chatting about our experiences thus far. On the long walk home (about 45 minutes) it decided to thunderstorm with terential downspours. Luckily, I found an umbrella that someone threw out sticking out of a garbage can in the road. It was in perfect working order and kept us relatively dry for the walk home.