And we missed our train... But we are finally in Amsterdam!

We got up early this morning to pack and leave for Amsterdam. We actually left super early because we needed to stop at the King's Cross station to take pictures at the 9 3/4 platform from Harry Potter. I've never seen or read any Harry Potter stuff though so I'm not really sure why this picture means.

Then we made our way to the St. Pancras train station to catch our train to Brussels where we'd switch to a train to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, we forgot that we would need time to go through customs since the U.K. isn't part of the E.U. So... we missed our train by literally a minute. This totally stunk because I wanted to get to Amsterdam by 2pm. Luckily they were able to rebook us to the next train to Brussels and our schedule was only off by an hour.

Belgian Urinal at the Brussels train station

Unfortunately though, when we got to Brussels, they weren't able to get us on the another high speed train to Amsterdam so we had to take the slower, inter-city train that stopped at Rotterdam. This delayed us another 2 hours. Eck!! All in all though, the initial mistake cost us only 3 additional hours of travel. It could have been much worse.

After arriving in Amsterdam late, we met the host of our AirBnb rental. It's two apartments owned by the same owner. One is on the first and basement floor and the other is on the 4th floor. The steps leading to the place are incredibly narrow and steep!! It's a little scary climbing up and down. Anyways, I didn't take any pictures of the place when it was clean but here's the link. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/754220
Overall, it was a fine place to stay. Good location, clean and nice enough. The bathrooms were sorting though!!!! In general, people in Amsterdam definitely don't waste any space.
By the time we got settled into our place, we didn't have a lot of time to do much because places seemed to close pretty early. We walked to the Central part of town and just went exploring. There were so many fun independent shops and cafes!! I was just adorable. The only crappy part is that like London, it was really cold and raining! Yuck! I definitely did not pack warm enough clothes because I was not expecting it to be so cold.

After walking around aimlessly looking for a place to get dinner, we settled on a cute Dutch restaurant. Will had the pork chops and I had the moules frites, which was delicious!!!

Now we are back, ready to warm up, dry off, and get some rest.
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