Day 3-4 Amsterdam to Cologn

The weather continues to be sunny and warm in the 70's. We are really lucky still. Yesterday I took the underground/ underwater tunnel from London to Brussels. There we met everyone on our tour and I met my roommate who is Emma from Aussie. She has 3 months off from work and is traveling all over the world during those 3 months. At first appearance she seems nice but a little ill and snored last night. :(   I actually met a couple from Rochester who are on my tour. How crazy is that! In addition I met quite a few other people including newlyweds from Toronto who are my age and very neat people to hang out with. They met on an online dating service 3 years ago. I opted out of the optional excursion in Amsterdam at night and went with the Canadians on our own. Our hotel is outside of the city so we navigated the train into the city, walked the canals, had dinner on the canal (which they charged me for tap water by making me buy a drink before I could get a glass of water), and then we walked through the Red Light district. On the way back the hotel shuttle left about 10 of us stranded at the station at midnight. None of us were happy about that and had to pay for cabs.

Amsterdam is full of bikes, lots of people, cigarette smoking, drinking, public groping/affection, and the "other" kind of smoking. The architecture is beautiful and the canal system is splendid.

Me in Amsterdam.

Canal view.

Bikes, bikes and more bikes.

Graffiti is big throughout Europe.

This was my dinner. A chocolate pancake the size of a pizza!

Tom and Kelly newlyweds from Toronto.

Me on the train back to hotel after a Saturday night in Amsterdam.

I Made it to London!

So the flight of course had delays and while the best part was that I was in the middle of the plane seats on the long flight over and no one was in the other 3 seats next to me the downer was that there was 2 kids and a baby in front of me. The mom changed the baby's diaper right on the floor and then I continued to smell baby poo for the entire long trip. Come to find out when I was putting my carry on back under my seat for touchdown the mother had wrapped up the diaper and left it under the seat in front of me! ugggg....gross!

I'm on my own for the duration in London. Tonight I'm going on a cruise with a 3 course dinner and tomorrow I'm doing a city tour of London in the morning with a trip to Windsor Castle in the afternoon. I might even wonder off and take a stroll to Hyde Park. It's about a 30 min. walk from my hotel.

Stay tuned...more adventure updates....

Me on the plane.

Ball's Brother Restaurant and Bar eating a wonderfully delicious dessert.

This was the main course- goat cheese and beet salad. Not good. Goat cheese is really strong tasting.

Images of the London Eye at night.

London Bridge at night.