Our initial plans for this past weekend was to go to Barcelona. That just didn't happen. Part of the group was leaving on Wednesday, but the train they were supposed to take was a very special train that didn't take Eurail. So they waited until Thursday to go. On Thursday we found out that the overnight train we were going to take didn't have bunk cabins, but only had the very expensive sleeper compartments. That wasn't for us. So we dropped back and punted that idea and decided to go to Belgium and the Netherlands.

Left Metz on a 6:53 train on Friday morning. Changed trains in Luxembourg and again in Brussels on the way to a city named Brugge. Small, quaint little city northwest of Brussels connected to the ocean by canal/rivers. Not much usually goes on there, unless you go during Euro2000. And that is exactly what we happened to do. Friday night there was a game between Czech and France. France won of course. Before the game everyone was in the streets partying and yelling, but after the game it was fairly quiet. We took a boat tour of the city and did some walking around. The hostel we stayed at was a good distance outside of the city, so we took a bus to and from it. Basically we just bummed around and enjoyed the city.

The next morning we headed to the train station and went to Amsterdam. By this time we were aware that there was a game in Amsterdam on Sunday and we didn't have reservations for the evening before (Saturday). We arrived and locked up our belongings in a train station locker and headed out for the city. We hoped on a "museumboat" (or museumboat in English) that dropped us of in front of the sites. First stop, Anne Frank house. It was a very good place to visit. We are reading a book about the Holocaust right now in my Ethics class, so it fit in nicely with my class. The building front is pictured in my photo gallery. It is very plain looking and they didn't allow photographs inside. In fact most of the places this weekend didn't allow photographs inside. Also pictured is the Rijks Museum that we went to on Sunday morning. On Saturday we went to the Van Gogh museum (not pictured). Besides that we just "experienced" the city. The city was well designed for bike riders. Most of the streets had bike paths beside them and lots of labeled paths through parks. On Saturday night at about 1am we walked from hotel to hotel until we found one that accepted the price we wanted to spend. It was fun because I was prepared to stay up all night if we didn't find one at our price. We went to the Rijks Museum where Rembrandt was featured on Sunday. Then we went to the train station and headed home.