Amsterdam

This morning, we were up bright and early to catch our train to Amsterdam. Between the easy ticket purchase and how quickly we managed to get ready in time I was worried things were going too smoothly. Apparently the universe agreed. We had to take an RER train out to the station. RER lines are like the metro lines but they take you out of the center of the city and into other zones. We took the RER line to Versailles so we knew you needed a different ticket but the woman who helped us get our tickets for Amsterdam said we could use regular metro tickets (not her fault, by the way, I think there was a bit of a language gap). When we switched from regular metro to the RER line our passes worked fine so we thought we were okay. Wrong. When we tried our passes to leave the metro station they didn't work. And then the SCNF gaurds let us through and then fined us 25 euro a piece. Not even our (genuine) confused tourist faces could get us out of it.

After that terrific start to the day, our trip was rather uneventful. We reached Amsterdam around 3 and were greated by cold rain. I really need to buy a jacket. After the initial coldness of it all, we discovered that Amsterdam is actually really cute, even when it's gloomy out. We checked into our hotel and did some wandering before getting delicious Indian food at last.

Tomorrow we are going to check out the city via another free walking tour. I promise to have pictures in the next day or so but now its time for a much needed shower!