It didn't take long into my trip with my sisters that I realized we were on a schedule. I guess I should have taken the Excel spreadsheet my sisters emailed me more serious. The spreadsheet listed all the countries in Europe and had a list of places to see in each country. There were a series of instructions which told me to rate each place on a scale of 0-5, 0 being things we didn't want to see, 5 being things we had to see. I was reluctant to fill out the huge spreadsheet because i felt it was silly to plan this much. My way of traveling is: Know where you want to go and and have idea of what you want to see there, when you get there just go with the flow and everything will work out. My sisters felt a concrete plan was a better formula however. So I was told what we would be seeing in each country and I knew we would have to move quickly from site to site to get it all fit in.
We had a long train ride to Amsterdam via Belgium. Upon our arrival in Amsterdam, we headed to search for a hostel. We found one relatively quickly and decided to drop our bags off and start exploring. Anne Frank's House and the Red Light District were the two things on our list of things to see. My sisters wanted to see the Red Light District before it got too dark, worried it might be dangerous at night. So we headed off towards where we thought the Red Light District appeared to be on the map. We walked around Amsterdam for an hour or two with no luck. We then realized it was past the time the Anne Frank House was open for tours so we decided to get some food near our hostel. Once done with our meal we headed back to our hostel, since it was more Red Light "Districty" then where we had been. Once we got closer to our hostel we saw some dim red lights a block past our hostel. We walked the extra block and realized we had chosen a hostel in the red light district and had been walking away from where we had been looking to go. After walking through the red light district and seeing what it consisted of, we went to a Heineken Ice Bar. The "Ice Bar" was definitely a tourist trap, but it was definitely an experience. Part of the bar was made completely of ice: tables, chairs, the bar, walls, mugs, shot glasses, etc. We then watched a very cheesy 3-D movie and our time was up.
The next day we headed to the Anne Frank House and got to see where the little girl wrote her diary. It was a neat experience and helped her stories come to life.
While in the Netherlands, we also went to a small town with a bunch of windmills. It wasn't the most exhilarating place to visit, but cool nonetheless. We then boarded a train to Munich, Germany.
