Almost home...

This weekend in Amsterdam has been a mess to say the least. We spent a few hours walking around the city yesterday afternoon before finally arriving at the van Gogh museum. Although surprisingly small, the museum was very well put together and told van Gogh's short life story through his art. We relaxed in a massive park nearby and then had a really good Dutch meal at a nearby cafe... It was just after this that everything got craaaazy.

If 6th St in Austin is rated R, the red-light district of Amsterdam was rated triple-X... Prostitutes standing at windows soliciting any male walking by, sex shop after sex shop with tons of nudity on display, mainly drunk/high men stumbling down the streets, loud shouting... it was insane! It took only a few hours of this before all 4 of us were ready for some peace. We spent lots of times hiding out in the back of a bar or in the bottoms of the many coffee shops out of the way. When we finally boarded our metro back to the campsite, things got really interesting.

So I've heard that Holland is a wet country but I never guessed we'd get caught in a rainstorm. The metro dropped us off near hte bus stop 3 minutes after the last bus ran so we had to walk back to our campsite which was advertised as a '15 minute walk' but is much more like 25-30... and it was pouring down rain, and around 40 degrees. We were soaked and totally frozen once we got back to the campsite and there isn't a heater in our room. I stripped down and got deep into my rented sleeping bag hoping my body would heat itself back up quickly. Then i realized that I had left my other shirt (the only other one I had) in the bathroom earlier that morning so all I had to wear were my wet clothes.

I woke up this morning surprisingly warm but my clothes were still drenched. We had to walk back to the metro (another 30 minutes) in the misting rain because the buses were not running today for some reason. The public transit in this country sucks horribly. We hopped on the metro and rode it back to the Centraal Station where I am now, waiting for my train to take me back to glorious Paris.

This city definitely makes me appreciate home, Austin, Houston, Texas, etc... It's a cesspool of sin and it kinda makes me feel dirty.

Hope everyone's doing ok!!