Yesterday was a blur and didn’t have much time to blog.  So here is the blog for yesterday and today!

Yesterday we arrived in Amsterdam around 5:45 AM!  The other half of the group got in around 3 hours later.  So we were stuck there for awhile.  Later, we hopped the shuttle for the hotel and about 15 minutes later we had arrived.  We got there and our rooms weren’t cleaned yet.  We put all of our stuff down in a a locked room and headed back to the airport to get on the train to the center of the city.

We got to the ticket kiosks and realized they didn’t take most of our credit cards.  And being in the city for only a day, most of us didn’t want to take out cash. We figured it out and ended up getting money out just for some tickets.  8.50 euro to and from.

Once downtown, we walked up to get out of the station. On the outside, the station was gilded with gold and very ornate.  It was one of those stations that would be very hard to lose track of and forget.  A game plan was made, and we broke off to explore the city and planned to meet back up in an hour to see what we wanted to do.  Walking around was quite an amazing experience.

Gathering together an hour later some decided to go to the Anne Frank museum and house.  Others, just wanted to walk around and find a flower market. We walked around and found quite a few canal bridges and took many pictures of different slanted buildings as well and interesting things we found.

We walked around for another 3.5 hours meandered through alley and accidentally stumbled across the red light district.  After walking around in circles we just decided to head back to the station and found others who were ready to go as well.  Forgetting my toothbrush at home I stopped in a HEMA store (basically a Target full of clothes, electronics and cosmetics) and grabbed a toothbrush and some Dutch toothpaste.  So that’s cool right?!

After heading back to the hotel, all of us were tired and grouchy.  We got back and took showers and felt very renewed.  KFC just happened to be across the street and we ran over to get some dinner. We headed back to the hotel and went to BED! After about 30 hours without sleep all of us just hit the pillow and were down for the count.

We woke up and packed and headed back to the airport for Moscow. We didn’t have wifi much today so very minimal posts.  In the Amsterdam airport, we accidentally stumbled on a protest of the Russian anti-gay protest.  There were some Dutch women singing a song and dancing to some music.  A couple people joined in from our group and were interviewed by a team afterwards asking if they liked and if they knew what it meant.  The song’s title was literally “Kiss the Russian”  a couple of lyrics were “Boys kiss boys and girls kiss girls”  Some of us said “OH CRAP” and that we should be here on video.

The Amsterdam airport was so very confusing and inefficient.  Every gate had it’s own security without anything beyond it except they waiting area.  Any liquids you had in your bags either had to be transferred or thrown away.  Anything bought from the food and gift stores had to be non-breakable and under a certain amount of liquid.  If you buy liquid it had to be unopened and sealed in a plastic bag from the store. The most inefficient security check followed.  We weren’t sure what they allowed since some things on receipts that were breakable said “weapon” and some things they said they’d throw away.

Our flight left at 11:40 am and with the three hour time change we arrived in Moscow around 6:30. We went through passport check and customs just fine which we were worried about. Got to the hotel finally, after sitting in traffic for about 2 hours we finally got here to the hotel.  Starving, we quickly dropped off our bags and quickly ran to the buffet to stuff our faces.  Now, we’re connected and blogging and pretty much working on anything we have right now.

Pictures of Amsterdam to come! Have a great afternoon everyone!!