Jess, Ashley and I took a trip to Amsterdam this past weekend, with a quick stop in Brussels. It was a hundred euro cheaper to fly into Brussels and then take the train to Amsterdam as opposed to flying right into Amsterdam, so we thought that would be a good idea. We were starving by the time we got to the city, so we set off in search of fries and waffles (Belgium is famous for these two foods, so we had to try them!). We eventually found a restaurant that served both, so we ate there-delicious! There was a chocolate shop across the street, so we went in and sampled some delicious Belgian chocolates. Then we got lost in the maze of confusing, unlabled streets until we finally found Grand-Place, the city's main square. The buildings around the square were beautiful, very ornate. They used to be guild houses, do we did a quick "lollipop guild" dance in the middle of the square and then headed back to the train station. We got there just after the train to Amsterdam left and had an hour to kill, so we had a quick beer in the bar and then got on our train. When we first got on, the train was pretty empty, so we didn't have trouble finding seats. They were nice and comfy, and the car was very spacious- we were very impressed! We ended up talking to some business men sitting across the aisle from us-the conversation somehow got to be about global warming and how the US is the cause of most of the pollution,etc...we basically ended up looking like stereotypical naive Americans because the guys we were talking to worked for NATO and were incredibly well informed. Things got worse when they came to check our tickets- we were informed that we had second class tickets but were sitting in first class and needed to move-further reinforcing our stupidity to everyone else in our car. We headed over to second class-it was full! People were standing in the aisles, doorways, etc. Luckily a bunch of people got off at the next stop and we were able to find seats for the remaining 2 hours of our journey to Amsterdam....
