This morning I got up around 8:30 and started packing up my things quietly until everyone else had woken up. We all got ready for the day and packed up all our things so that we could clean the apartment before we left. With all our things packed up and the place clean, we left our things in the apartment while we went back to Cite to do some souvenir shopping and eat breakfast. We went back to the same place we had crepes the first time, but this time we got sweet crepes instead of savory ones. I got a Nutella-banana-coconut crepe and it was exactly the sweet deliciousness you would think it would be. We also chose this creperie in particular because it had Wi-Fi so we could all download our train passes for later in the day.
No longer ravenously hungry, we went to the Siene and walked along the river perusing the little stands that vendors were selling their goods from. They all had very similar things, including postcards, prints and paintings of Paris, iconic images of French things, coasters, magnets, and little Eiffel towers. We walked around the Siene and the surrounding area for a bit longer before heading back to our apartment to pick up our things. We had planned to sit at our apartment for a half an hour because we had some time to waste before we needed to go to the train station, but the cleaning lady for our apartment was already there so we grabbed our things and went to the burgers and fries place that was right next door so that we could get lunch before we left.
After our burgers we went to the train station, which was probably the most confusing of train stations we have been in yet. It took us quite some time to find the part of the station where the trains were, then we had to wait for 20 minutes until our platform number was posted before we could walk to the end of the line where our assigned carriage was. The train ride was very peaceful, and I spent a majority of my time reading my book. For a short time I did talk with the lady who was sitting next to me who was French, but moved to Amsterdam 9 years ago. She was very nice and wrote out a list of things to do and places to see and eat at while we were in Amsterdam. We stepped off the train at 7:30, then had to figure out how to get to the metro station and find a machine to buy a metro ticket at. The single pass tickets in Amsterdam are definitely the most expensive we have had to pay for yet, but we weren’t really up for walking around with all of our luggage without knowing where exactly we were walking to. We only had to go one stop, and then our hostel was less than a five minute walk from the station.
Mira, Hannah, and I are staying at the Shelter City Hostel in Amsterdam, and so far it has been a pretty nice place to stay. We are sleeping in the 16 bed dorm style female room, and as expected it is a room with 8 bunk beds in two rows of four and lockers. The room is a little cramped for space, but the most important part is that we have a clean bed to sleep on and a place to lock up our valuable things while we adventure. There is a small area outside the rooms with tables, a foosball table, books, and vending machines, and there is a café attached to the hostel where we get breakfast in the morning free of extra charge. The best part about this hostel though? IT HAS RELIABLE WIFI. We were all so excited about having internet connection that after we had gotten dinner and came back, that we stayed up until almost 2am catching up on everything that we needed to do online. Eventually we were just too tired to stay up any longer so we reluctantly went to bed.