coffee, anyone?

** we have added heaps of photos to flickr and are organising them into groups by city because they havent been added in order. look for the sets or tags and click on the cities. some you will have already seen but heaps are new. enjoy!

Amsterdam.. this is certainly a very hardcore place compared to everywhere else we have been. the trip there in the coach wasn't the nicest, i received some bad news from home. to tony, queta, ashlea, lauren and danika, my thoughts are with you guys, and i hope that you're ok, or as ok as you can be. i love you guys.

when we arrived at amsterdam, we were so tired. it was a nine hour bus trip there, and then we found out that we weren't going to go check into the hotel until about 11 that night. this was because a few people had signed up to go to a show in the red light district. on the notice board, kerri (our tour guide) had written that it was a family orientated show on. but then she informed us on the bus that it was actually a live sex show..thats right, people having sex on stage.. we didn't go, the prudes that we are. the people who did go said it was pretty disgusting, except for one of the guys loved it. while they were at the show we went and found a cafe..or was that a coffee shop? see, if you mix them up you can get more than you bargained for in a cup of coffee. hehe. anyway, when the others came back, we went to the hotel which was ages away.

the next day we all had to get up early and go to a cheese and clog farm. a lady showed us how they make cheese, and then a man who was absolutely off his face showed us how they make clogs. he was hilarious! ange and i bought some cheese, because it keeps for nine months, so we got a round block of it to travel with. it has mustard seeds in it. mmmm. then we went into the town to spend the day wandering around, and sitting in cafes...or was it coffee shops? it was a bit too cold to do anything in terms of sight seeing. make that it was freaking freezing! so we shivered our way around and then had dinner with the group at the chinese restaurant and ted, ange and i didnt go on the cruise thingy so we went somewhere warm and waited for the others then we all went back to the hotel and there was a party in teds room so some of us hung out there for a bit drinking some wine from the cruise and then went to bed!

poor ted. he was the only american on the tour and he got picked on by the stoned clog man. so funny. and then at his own party he fell asleep and left us all to clean up!

it wasn't too cold to do any sightseeing. i went to anne franks house - jess just sat outside. in the cold. which was why she was freezing while i was inside staying nice and warm. the house was amazing! i got to go up into the annexe where she lived for two years and i saw the pictures she stuck up on the wall of her bedroom. creepy. there were passages from the book written on the walls and lots of information about the family. i can't believe that they all lived there for so long; i would have gone crazy.

the bus ride yesterday was only seven hours, but everyone was feeling tired and seedy from the cruise/party last night so we slept most of the way. we got to paris around four in the afternoon and then rushed to an internet cafe to book accommodation for last night. jess has discovered that she absolutely hates hostels and refuses to stay in a dorm again. we'll see how that goes. and here we thought I was going to be the princess! I even had a shower this morning, something jess couldnt bring herself to do. hahaha. so now we're sitting in london, freezing our butts off and cant wait to get to janets house this afternoon. nearly there...