Day 58 March 22nd 2009 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Delicious free breakfast one more time before heading over into inner Amsterdam to find the office of Mike’s Bike Tours. After finding the office we were led over to the bike storage shop on the other side of the street and introduced to our guide, Shaun. Shaun had lived in LA and now resides in Amsterdam giving tours as his full time job. He started us off with a quick history of the Netherlands and Amsterdam including wars, commerce, city-destroying fires and the people of tolerance. Then we were split into two groups because there were so many people there for the tour. Bikes were supplied and we were on our way outside, following Shaun in a 20 person duckling line. It was a bit chilly but perfect weather for a slightly athletic bike ride. We stopped at all different points in the city to chat about waterways, Amsterdam housing, marijuana, the Red Light District, invasion by Germans, Yoko Ono and John Lennon and everything else one could ever want to know about the city. We eventually ended up at a small farm outside the city after seeing a very cool windmill. At the farm we got delicious samples of the cheese the farm produced as well as got to see a quick process of making the wooden clogs that Holland is so famous for. It is very uncommon now to see everyday Amsterdamm’ers in wooden clogs but our farmer tour guide explained to us that a few professions still require the use of the super tough shoe, like farmers to protect their feet from cow hooves. Katie and I both bought a small wheel of cheese from the farm and we headed on our bikes back into the city. Shaun told us about a business in Amsterdam that had been selling nothing but french fries for 60 years so Katie and I went over to check it out. This place was the typical hole in the wall take away eatery but man, their fries were out of this world. I got something called “hawaiian” sauce which tasted a bit like tarter sauce and Katie got the mayo-fries. Both were excellent caloric gut bombs. We picked up our bags from the hotel and headed towards the train station, planning on grabbing the overnight train back to Brussels. That plan was not going to work so well considering there was no overnight train back to Brussels. So we instead took the 9pm train getting into Brussels at 11:30 and had to stay at a last minute hotel one night so Katie could leave back to Florence the next morning.