Cannibus?

I am currently sitting in my hotel in Amsterdam, it's called the LLoyds or something like that. It is a very nice hotel - it has a restruant, free computer/internet access, a bar, cultural center, lounge area, etc.

Hierald and I are having fun...it's been an interesting day! We left Cheltenham at 7:30 this morning, and caught the bus to London at 10:30. Our flight started boarding at 11:20, so we booked it to our terminal, check-in, and through security.

Now I have two stamps in my passport!! Yay. Anyway, the flight to Amsterdam was 45 minutes!!! haha, it was crazy. Hardly worth buckling my seatbelt for, you know?

My mom sent me two lovely packages, and one had St. Patricks day decorations in them! She also sent me like 5 pins, with sayings such as "kiss me I'm irish", "i speak fluent Blarney", and "eat, drink, and be irish". I stuck them all over my green travel purse, and the man next to me on the plane (probably age 35) asked if I was irish. I said yes, and he told me he was from Belfast! We talked for like 20 minutes about Ireland and other countries that he traveled to, and it was a good conversation. He asked what I was doing in Amsterdam, and I said just touring, etc. He said "nah, you're going to the pubs", and I was like "maybe, but we want to do historic stuff" and he goes "oh, so you're going to the OLD pubs".

It was really funny, and I laughed pretty hard (I was going on 3 hrs of sleep!!!I was giddy). Then, out of nowhere he goes, "i better stop talking to you or I will want to kiss you." I was like "ha---ha--ha" and then I was awkward and didnt say anything, and we didnt talk for the rest of the trip!!!! It was such a weird experience.

Also, can I just add, that I talked to the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life today. He was a Dutch steward on the airplane, working on first class. We were boarding the plane, and I was stopped next to him and was like "hi" (but I was thinking 'take me now, handsome') and he was very nice and said hi, asked my name, and why I was going to amsterdam. I asked him for a recommendation of where to visit, and he goes (keep in mind, I'm standing in front of first class waiting in line, the people in the front are already boarded) and he goes "well, the red light district is very nice". I ABOUT DIED. Everyone in the plane ABSOLUTELY cracks up -- I'm sure you know but the red light district is mostly pornography, prostitution, drugs, etc. That's where Amsterdam gets his name. So--it was interesting.

We finally get to our hotel, and check in...with a dragqueen. Working at a 4 star hotel. Hierald and I find our room, and it looks like a bathroom. The walls and floor are all tiled. There is no furniture in the room except for two beds and a nightstand. The beds are really modern looking, and are covered with huge white down comforters. Lovely! Except...there were also FEATHER PILLOWS. At this point, however, I am so dead tired that I sleep anyway. We tried to watch tv, but most channels are in Dutch, so it's not that fun. We watched an old episode of monk though, and that was fun.

We take a nap, and wake up STARVING. We decided to order room service - its not that expensive and we hadnt eaten for 12 hrs. during this time we're flipping through the channels and Ho finds a spanish one. we're watching that for 30 seconds and room srvice comes. the lady brings the stuff in, and says thank you and goodnight in spanish. We were so confused, until we realized that she noticed the channel and ho's dark skin, and just assumed that we spoke spanish. About this time, i make my first trekk to the UNISEX shower/bathroom down the hall. TOTALLY smelled pot coming from the next room over. I took a shower, got ready, then we left and explored for several hours.

All in all, it was an INTERESTING day. Ho and i both feel like we're in the twlightlight zone and that everything that happened was a dream. Odd experience, but definitly memorable.

More to come later, I promise.

My Weekend in London

Hello faithful followers. I apologize for not posting recently, but I have been extremely busy creating the

Events of the London Weekend:

number of nights spent at a hostel: 1
clean blankets used: 0
creepy old men met: 1
Touristy sites visited: READ ON TO SEE!!

So, I went to London last weekend. I went with Stephanie and Anna, probably my best friends here. We took a bus from Cheltenham to London for pretty cheap. We left at 6:30 in the morning, and got to Victoria station around 9:00. We had the whole weekend ahead of us!
When looking at a map of London, my friends and I decided that our hostel wasn't that far away from the bus station, and that it wouldn't be a big deal to walk there.

Maps have scales, and its not too hard to get lost in London. Both important facts that we forgot. Needless to say, it took a long time to get to our hostel, several hours of walking. We stopped for lunch eventually, which was amazing because we were famished. We found our hostel eventually and checked in. One good thing about walking, however, was that we walked directly past Buckingham Palace! We stopped and got some pictures of the area. It was beautiful, as most of London turned out to be.

The hostel experience was a definite new experience for me. sleeping with six people to a room on flimsy bunkbeads was fine, but then it came time to make our own beds. We were given sheets and pillowcases, but not blankets. I supposed that they were in our room. They were, but they were not by any streach of the imagination clean. Now, I have a thing about dirty blankets. I don't like them. They're gross!! but I eventually got over it, it was all a part of the hostel experience I guess. We met one of the three guys that was in the room with us. He was a man in his late thirties who was from Japan I believe. He had moved to Australia for awhile, and was now stuying fashion in London and living hostel to hostel. he was definitely an...interesting character.

After we got situated, it was time to go and see London!! We hopped on a Big Bus tour. It was 20 pounds for 48 hours of tourism. It made around 80 stops and you could get on and off whenever you felt like it. It also came with a free Thames river cruise and some walking tours, neither of which we took advantage of. However, it made a stop close to our hostel and we could see everything that we wanted to see while we were there. It was pretty cool :) On saturday we basically just rode it around, got most of the tour, and saw several fun things. We had walked for so long that morning that we were all pretty worn out. We got an early dinner and went to bed at 9:30 pm.

Sunday morning we woke up and were ready to go! We hopped on Big Bus and went for a ride. The first place we stopped at was the National Gallery. The Gallery had picassos, renoirs, da vincis, monets, and many more famous artists. I even saw one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. It was a great way to kick off the day. We went to Parliment, saw Big Ben, the Tower bridge (london bridge is falling down, falling down) the London Dungeons, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, St. Pauls Cathedral (where Princess Diana and Charles got married), the tower of London (where the crowned jewels are kept), and much much more. Please check out my pics at community.webshots.com/username/mollyburke to see everything that I'm writing about. It was just such an amazing time. We saw stuff that I didnt even think about - the street where Sherlock Holmes "lived", Scotland Yard, Paddington Station, where Paddington the Bear was found in the stories, pubs where dickens ate, playhouses where Shakespear performed for the queen, a church steeple that was the inspiration for the idea of a tiered wedding cake, Tony Blair's house. It was just overwhelming - I have to say that I love London.

We left at 8:30 on Sunday eveningn after a full day of touring. It was a great weekend, and I wouldn't have changed anything for the world. I'm actually going back on March 10th to pick Hierald up at the airport, and we're going to spend the weekend in london. It will be great to see some of the landmarks more intimately. Most of the things that cost money we did not do. We spent most of the time doing the free stuff :)

All in all, it was a great trip, and I consider myself very lucky.

Missing you all! love from across the Atlantic!

British word of the week: Hoovering (vaccuming)