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Yesterday was a VERY interesting day. Yes, maybe even more interesting than the Red Light District. We started off the day with everything crossed off our Amsterdam list and William decided that we should go on a bike tour through the country to 1. Kill time ‘til our (OMG crazy) train ride 2. Because it would be pretty. I agreed, mostly because I knew William really wanted to do it. As we got there to meet up for our tour, I immediately noticed that I was the only non-Caucasian person, therefore in my mind I immediately came to the (correct, even if maybe slightly stereotypical) conclusion that everyone would have not one problem on the bike. I was right. While William, and all the other people, mostly Aussies and other Dutch and Europeans were in their element I was a crazy fool on my bike. But to justify my lack of agility on the bike, I hadn’t ridden one since I was 10 years old!

Anyways, once I was on the bike, I was great; it was just balancing myself on it to get going. I swear, if I had gotten on the bike in my driveway to ride down the street, I’d put all the kids to shame, but since I was doing it in front of a bunch of pros and swift Amsterdam-ians it was as if I was truly special. Yes, Amsterdam is THE city to take a bike tour in and yes, Amsterdam is THE best place to get on a bike and go, if you can handle the heat. Luckily there were no tragedies, and believe me there were plenty of opportunities for those.

Examples, Things I did not do that you should: Look for crossing bikers, look for crossing humans, look for kids chasing their balls (that cross your path), look for waddling ducks, look for the elderly, look for the elderly on wheel chair bikes, look closely at the hundreds of CANALS, look for cars, look for amazing biker children, look for giant trams that can smash you, look at the biker in front of you, mind the biker behind you, remember the pedestrians on the sidewalk next to you and most importantly realize that you are not invincible. I ignored all this and took a leap of faith every time I came to an intersection.
I really can’t believe I didn’t look both ways before crossing intersections, but honestly if I had done so, I’d also have ended up in one of the many canals. I’m pretty sure the lovely people boating on this perfect day would have disliked Americans more than they already do if one landed on their brunch table.

Moving on, the tour itself was amazing. If you wonder where all the beautiful wild flowers shown in Ralph Lauren catalogs come from, let me tell you. The fields of The Netherlands are filled with aromas of amazing flowers and you can see them in all colors imaginable for miles. Most of the bike ride I smelled that and cow poo. The cow poo because we went to a cheese farm! Happy cows come from Cali and Amsterdam! The farmer, who was a native of Aussie, citizen of Netherlands and a speaker of Hindi, was quite entertaining. He explained how he made cheese and showed us around at hundreds of cheese aging up to 15 years old. He also made… CLOGS. Very cool to see where these things really come from. He explained the process and I promise it wasn’t as boring as it sounds.

In the end we covered a lot of things and places in the tour that we may never have covered on our own. It’s easy to explore the city, and much harder to explore the country. I’d highly recommend taking a tour of the countryside despite your assumption that there’s nothing out there to see. Believe me, there’s plenty, and if you’re a city girl like me, you’ll be amazed at the views and will have a refreshing day out of the town.


Amsterdam ended, not too quickly, we were ready to move on to the peaceful and beautiful (even though all of our trip is) part: Switzerland, Lucerne specifically. So we caught a tram for our 8:30 departure from the train station. Once we got here, we saw the chaos that is a Europe train station. OMFG. Super duper confusing, and this is excluding the fact that our entire ticket was written in German. So we ask for our platform and it hasn’t been announced, but they tell us that it will be switched to 7a they think. We go there along with several others who’ve been told the same thing. We get there, we wait. As we wait I look around and think to myself, “man these people don’t look like tourists or Swiss.” Then we have 10 minutes till the train in our platform leaves supposedly to Zurich and I’m starting to feel nervous because everyone is getting on, but we aren’t sure if that train is the right one and there is NO ONE to ask. Finally, we realize that train is for Moscow and feel scared for the poor souls who will go to sleep on that train and wake up there instead of Zurich.

As Americans we often have a hard time approaching and asking Europeans questions. We don’t want to go through that awkward language barrier issue, we realize how much gets lost in translation, and lastly, we just don’t always get what they’re trying to say. During this whole confusing experience we wanted to ask the train attendants, who also looked as though they were waiting to board Zurich, and timidly approached them. Luckily a BRIT! beat us to it. His words exactly, “Where exactly is this train going? Moscow? Well why was I told that my train leaves here. [Upon being asked to see his ticket he responds] Yes, here it is, but I don’t know what any of it says; it’s all in German!” Hallelujah! Someone calls out this crappy system and also points out that none of us speak German. UGH. The attendants finally, by the grace of god, decide to pull out their walkie talkie?!?! What? They had that all along??? RUDE. Things get figured out and our train comes 30 minutes late. We board only to find that our bunk with beds is 6 to a room with a dinky ladder and enough space for me to slide into. Lucerne better be Utopia.