I AmSterdam

7:30

Hey Hey!

Its the morning of the third day and I'm already up at 7 on the dot to shower and get ready before Michael and Alex to go and use the internet in peace hah.

Travels are going well, have got really lucky with the trains, walked straight off the boat in St Malo and on to a TGV to Paris for all of 3 EUR. Three metros trains and one really really bored information officer later we find ourselves at Hoche station and wandering down an very dodgey and very wrong direction in search of the hostel. After reconsidering the instructions on the email for the umpteenth time we found it down a a couple of back streets in a area filled, like I suspect much of Paris, with french men sitting around outside cafes with not much else to do than laughing (really) late into the night! We found ourselves a L'Eclerc and dined on bread sausison and the squidgy cheese I don't know how to spell. It would occur to us later, much later, that we had in fact left the remainder of the cheese in the Hostel's fridge, woops... but it'll be chucked when the check our date of departure. We bought We finally conked out about 12:00 only to be woken again an hour or so later by a tap or a shower or some other piece of noisy hissing pipe-work which continued to alternate on and off for at least three quarters of an hour! Michael was not woken by this.

Up at 6:30 the next morning to shower before breakfast there were strange memories of Thailand as the menu consisted of tea, coffee, bread, cornflakes and what tasted like pretty old UHT milk.

5:02

Took a train to Brussels which, as the guide book had predicted, was very very bland. Killed a bit of time by leaving the InterRail tickets at the counter of the sandwich shop between trains and running back for them in flip flops very noisily through the underground station. Rocked up in Amsterdam at about 2:00 in the afternoon and got served at the tourist information at about 2:10... then next day... we were given a bus stop and told the hostel was a 5 minute walk in no specific direction form that stop. The bus fare was extortion and the bus driver was nuts. After half an hour or rotating maps and playing "match the collection of consonants and vowels on a wall with those on a map" we found the hostel, it looked alright from the outside but inside it was amazing! Still haven't talked to anyone yet other than appologising to the proprioter who happened to be stood next to me at the dinner buffet as I spilt scalding hot soup over my left hand. "Ouch" he said, then walked off.

Today we walked the half hour to the bicycle hire shop and rented three traditional dutch biked. We were now free properly explore the city and thats just what we did.

(this is no where near finished but its hard to put everzthing down heh, thee will be a major delay, might just put short intersting things here for now.
1 - failed spectacularly to get into the bunk bed and fell from the top, now have an F shaped scar on my forearm, the other two say its for Fail, Frikken Funny and Fag.
2 - Got hit in the eye by a huge pawn
3 - Having a shouted conversation with a German girl with limited english between the ground to a third floor window at 11:00 at night =D

that's all for now folks!