AMSTERDAM!

So. Made it successfully to Amsterdam and am currently peeing my pants in excitement waiting for Steph to get here in, hopefully, t minus half an hour... YAY! Leah, a friend of mine from Carleton (who studied in Paris with me during college) is living in Amsterdam doing a post-doc this year with her boyfriend, Brett, and they have an awesome apartment with a great little futon just for me. :) It was awesome but so randomly surreal to get to Leah's apartment on Wednesday night IN Amsterdam.

Speaking of arriving here, why is it that you can fly from Boston to San Francisco and get MAYBE a bag of peanuts during six hours of flying, but on two barely one-hour flights (Lyon - Zurich and Zurich - Amsterdam) I got offered multiple drinks (including beer), three little Toblerone chocolate bars, and a random bread and cream cheese sandwich. I mean, seriously. I love Europe. Other things that are awesome/hilarious about flying here: the seat cleaning spray in all the bathrooms (maybe that's just Switzerland though...), the smoking rooms in all the airports--every single one has "Tobacco seriously damages health" in big, scary lettering across the entrance, and, of course, flying over the Alps. So incredibly amazing, even from thousands of miles above. Pictures to come.

As far as Amsterdam goes, it's awesome. Not going to go into any real detail now, but it's really such a cool city. Bikers rule the roost here, literally. Cars will stop to let bikers cruise through, and god help you if, as a pedestrian, you get in the way of a biker. There are awesome bike lanes, although they don't have anything like the Velo'v here, which is kind of weird since it would be perfect! But I guess everyone just owns a bike (or 2 or 3). I have yet to ride my own bike (got a ride on the back of Brett's bike home last night, which was exhilaratingly awesome), but it's definitely on the agenda.

I wandered around most of the city yesterday getting lost and loving it, stumbling upon canal after canal and coffee shop after coffee shop. I'm not sure I will ever get used to the smell of weed everywhere all the time and seeing pot growing in store windows. So crazy! Not to mention the whole Red Light District thing. The women seriously just lounge around in their bras and underwear talking on cell phones as if it's totally normal. Which I guess it is here...

Anyway, so yeah. Amsterdam is great!