Bruge to Amsterdam
　
After our complimentary breakfast from the hotel, we spent Sunday morning going about Bruge getting souvenirs and gifts from Belgium. Then headed to the train station about 12 to catch our 1:00 train to Antwerp, a very beautiful train station. Maybe you recognize it from U-Tube. Then on to Amsterdam.

And just outside  is at least 30 diamond/jewelry shops within steps of the train station!

Since there was some technical trouble on the line we had to change trains and arrived about an hour later at Amsterdam Central Station, about 5:00.

Now this is where I started 6 weeks ago when I arrived in Europe and left the airport to find a couple of caches near the train station in case I didn’t get back here. I see the same things I saw then the canals, the millions of bikes and lots of people. It seems so long ago that I was here but the I can’t believe that I am in the last week of my seven week adventure.

I had kept a booklet of the Metro system of the city and so we have been studying it and figuring out where our hotel is and how to get there. We are in the area that is close to Vondel Park and very near the Van Gogh Museum which is one thing on our list of things to see and do.

We are at the Leidse Square Hotel a Best Western. We are at on the 3^rd floor, S&P, 355 and I was given 307.…I couldn’t get my door open and just as I was going to go downstairs and have some one help me, I got the door open…..and much to my surprise, there was someone in there! Staff had already given this room to someone else and not recorded it. So I got 308, a nice room on the back side of the hotel…quiet and cool.

We found dinner at a nearby pub. Sheryl has a list of things she wanted to see in Amsterdam….so she thought the famous Red Light district would be a good place to start, so off we went, map in hand to catch a tram, then walking the narrow crowded streets past doors and rooms and small “coffee shops“….very strange, you read about it and now here it is….very strange.

We eventually got the Chinatown (found a cache) and then walk back to the tram to get to our hotel. One of the nice things about this hotel is that it has a little bar that serves wine and beer…so we stopped to have a drink before we headed up to bed.