greetings from holland!

Hi all!

We're having a great time! We're in the ferry station right now waiting to board our overnight ship that looks like a cruise ship! We're really excited to have our own space again, even if it's just for the night!

We had a great time in Amsterdam! It was so weird and cool to spend my birthday there!! I had a great one though! My favorite beer in France and Amsterdam has been La Chauffe, so we had that! Then something that I never thought I would eat, we had French fries with mayo and it was damn good!! We've had fries about everyday since, if not more than once in a day and they've always had mayo! Mmm so good! Its way different than American mayo though, there is seasoning or something else in it that gives it a somewhat ranch flavor! Mmmmm!! I will miss it! Amsterdam was a lot smaller and our hostel was in a good location being close to everything, so I think I gained back all the weight I had shed in those five days in Paris with just three in Amsterdam! Blast! Haha, we definitely ate a lot more fried foods and just food in general. One of my most favorite things I've ever eaten was from this gross fast food place called Febo! It was like fried Mac and cheese with no noodles, so just fried cheese in pocket form. Dear lord, so good!! I want to open one. I had one of them everyday in Amsterdam whether or not if I was hungry! :) it was only €1,50! It was so funny and sorta like a fast food vending machine! You would put your money in the section that you would want and then you would push a button and you reach in and grab it! Yumm! Every time after I would get it, there would be no more left! I always made it just in time!

The days in Amsterdam were definitely just spent eating, drinking and walking around the city. The weather wasn't all that great, so we weren't able to rent bikes. We went to this 30 minute concert on Tuesday, Tory had read all about it and it was the #1 thing to do in Amsterdam. It was crazy how many people were there. It was really cool though!  We went to the Anne Frank house, so that was interesting. It's crazy how big the houses are though. I feel like they are like old Louisville houses, but five or six stories high! The house was good, but sorta expensive and crazy packed. I'm glad we did it though. After that, we went to the Heineken experience museum. That was a lot more fun than I anticipated! It was about two hours and you get two free beers and a free ferry ride out of it at the end! Tory found an extra bracket on the ground too, so we each got three beers! We found out that the key to drinking Heineken is to drink it in big gulps, haha, that's what they told us! It was fun, we were glad we did it!

Our hostel was great! We had an 8 person room! The first night it was just us and another couple from Australia, Liz and Ben. They were really nice. They said that the night before there was like 6 other people in the rooms- all boys, drinking and partying all night, so they were glad it was just us! The next night, three guys joined us. They were really nice. We met up with them in the bar one night and had drinks and hung out with them for a while! Last night we had a full room! Three more people joined, Liz and Ben had left. They got in at like 4am last night and were pretty noisy, but it was nothing too bad. This morning we woke up when those three boys did. They had gone to the bar crawl thru the hostel the night before and had lost one of their friends. Turns out the one friend had woken up on someones roof with no money or passport. Not good. He said that they were at their second bar and drinking at a normal pace when he just blacked out and couldn't remember anything. It sounded like he had been roofied! He did not look great at all this morning and looked like he had been punched in the face. Ekk. He was going to have to book a flight home and leave their trip early. They were only a week in on a 6 week trip, super lame :(. He said that all of his money for the trip was in his wallet too. So crazy. Hopefully the police will be able to help him! We were thinking about going on the pub crawl, but Liz and Ben had advised us against it! I'm glad they did! Sheesh!!

We checked out and walked thru Amsterdam to get on a train to hook of holland. It was interesting! We were trying to buy a ticket at the kiosk and it wouldn't take our card and then we went to the counter and the lady didn't even tell us where we needed to go and the ticket didn't have any of that information either. Somehow we found our way, made a transfer and made it to our destination with plenty of time to kill before our ferry out! We grabbed a bite to eat in the small town, a great burger and fries! Tasted as good as in-n-out!! Mmm!! Went to a cafe, had a couple of coffees, used their wifi. A couple of older men came in and made a remark about Tory's tottenham jersey saying "I didn't know I was going to have to watch the game with a tottenham fan" it was funny! He was really nice though! He was a Liverpool fan. The old men turned on a tv in the bar and just watched soccer. It was awesome. When we left we went to a cheese store :) Mmm. Bought some salami and cheese for dinner tonight! Then we went to the market and bought a bottle of wine for dinner too! It was only €2! I'm looking forward to the boat ride tonight!! Should be fun!!

Well, I guess that's it for now! Hope y'all are doing great!

Love and miss you all!
Jenn