Lost in Europe: Part One- London and Amsterdam

One of my best girl friends and I embarked on a journey (and it was definitely just that) to Europe in May of 2006. This was my 2nd time to travel over the pond and I was looking forward to the way we had planned to do it ~ our plan was to have NO plan!

Some things fell into our lap that we would have never come across if we had been on a scheduled tour and then again we definitely had a few "holy crap, what do we do now?!?" moments, but all in all, it was an amazing trip! Even with all of the hiccups, it was perfectly imperfect.

We began the journey in London, England with backpacks as big as our dreams...

....And our B & B as big as our wallets. ;)

We hung out in a park for awhile breathing in the crisp London air.

And of course strolled by Big Ben and the London Eye.

We hung out in London for a few days and then it was off to Paris! or so we thought...Apparently there was a huge futball game going on in Paris and Eurostar tickets were 5 times the normal rate. Without having any reservations or any plan, we decided to reroute the itinerary we had,or lack there of, to Amsterdam. I mean, why not?!? We found a bus that would take us there in only 10 hours! ha.

A quick pit stop in Brussels and then we were back on the road....

We arrived in Amsterdam at 12:30am with no where to go and more importantly no where to sleep. A couple pieces of pizza later and with the help of fellow backpackers we met in the pizzeria, it ended up being one of our favorite places! The city of bikes...and we were up for the challenge.

We met some really fun people in our hostile ~ The Bulldog. Thank goodness they had a couple extra beds left for us at 4am! We were clearly still jet lagged but were determined to be up at the break of dawn to take in everything this city had to offer. Of course we had to take a quick stroll through the red light district since our hostile was right around the corner from it. We couldn't take pictures, but it's probably for the best. Not sure I want to remember those scenes anyways. I was offered drugs more times in one hour than I was told to just say no in my entire life. Crazy, crazy city at night....not my cup of tea but part of the experience I suppose...

We decided to rent bikes the next day and really try to see the city as a local sees it...We passed windmills, canals, Anne Frank's home, coffee shops and coooffeeeshops.

We stopped for lunch to try an authentic Dutch meal...Still not sure what we ate.

The BEST dessert in the city at Renee's! Chocolate covered waffles and carmel laced ice cream! YUM ;)

Yup, in true tourist form, we definitely took the Heineken tour and partook in a few tastings as well...

Our favorite coffee shop, that served coffee, for people watching. We sipped the best green tea we'd ever drank after tons of walking at the Heineken and Van Gogh museuems!

I absolutely loved Amsterdam, but now it was time to meet up with Jen's "family" in Germany. We were off to Koln and had no idea what we were about to get ourselves into...