Pre-Roma Update

Well this is the third week in Rome (4th week in Europe) and I decided that I needed to begin a consistent blog (hopefully I'll stay with it). I have already decided that I am going to be very upset when I have to leave Rome. There aren't too many things that I don't like here.

So a brief update on my travels to-date:
We left Minneapolis on the 24th, had a layover in Iceland, and arrived in London on the morning of the 25th. We managed to find our hostel easily and walked around Hyde Park and other parts of the city. When we got back to our hostel, our friend Jason Bril, miraculously found the hostel even though he had no address. One inconvenience to traveling abroad is No Phone. The next day the 4 of us roamed around London, and that evening Abby, Tyler, and I flew to Amsterdam where we met our friend Alex at Centraal Station who is studying abroad in Amsterdam for the semester. He generously let us stay at his friends' apartment for 5 nights. The room was hella tiny- only 2 small mattresses on the floor with no excess room.

In Amsterdam the three of us went to the Rijksmuseum, a Snor party at a club, the red light district, and lots of places in between. The city is beautiful: so many canals. The red light district looked like the rest of the city by day, just a few girls in the windows every now and then. At night it was pretty humorous to watch men stare at the windows. The 'coffee shops' were amusing too except that the smell of pot just about made me gag by the time we left.

We took a day trip to Zaanse Schans (about 35 minutes from Amst.) where there were sbout 13 old-fashioned working windmills. It was pretty interesting to see these massive structures at work. We went inside the chalk-mill. We also saw how they made cheese and clogs. It felt just like old-fashioned Holland.

Another day we went to Het Loo which was the Prince of Orange's palace and huge parterre gardens. We had learned about it in LA history class and were really excited to see the garden in person. I'm sure it won't hold a candle to Versailles though.

My computer battery is going to die. I will continue the updates soon!