Amsterdam - The Unending Lava Days

April 17

So today was meant to be the day I went home. My flight was due to leave Brussels at 10, Scott and Amy were meant to meet me at the train station, we were all meant to then go to a football match then have dinner and I would catch a train home in time for the Oztley run organized for Dan's presence in the country. None of this became a reality. The Oztley run has been postponed, Dan will miss it and a bunch of my friends are still stuck around various parts of Europe.

It was a massive mish to actually get to the hostel. At Amsterdam Central Station I couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket to where I wanted. After about half an hour of looking purposely confused and no one approaching me to help, I finally asked someone. It was a 20 min metro ride out of the city and had to wait about half an hour under a bridge for the hostel shuttle that I wasn't convinced was coming...yeah not sketchy at all.
So I got to 'Lucky Lake Hostel' at about 4 and was absolutely amazed with it. It's a caravan park, but it's a hostel. Since I was here on my own I also made a point of talking to people. I met these 2 gay guys from Alaska who are a bit hilarious. They overuse the words "right" and "totally" all the time, it's so American.

Not much actually happened today, I pretty much spent the day relaxing. I went for a walk to the lake (!), read on the hammock, and after my 2 cheese toasties for dinner I just hung around the common area chatting wih the people who came and went, mostly other staff who were off duty as they all live on site. All of whom were smoking weed, hey it's Amsterdam, would you expect any less?
The thing I love about this hostel is it reminds me of home a bit. The cool, brisk air feels like when you wake up camping in spring, the sun is out but it's a bit cold. But you don't mind because it's going to be a warm day. I had leftovers of a chap called Laurie and Irish Rob made me a hot dog. Seriously, how good is the hostel culture of some places!

April 18

So today I actually went in to town. I started with the New Europe walking tour starting at Dam square, first stop: The Red Light District, which was originally developed around the Old Church (Oude Kerk). Outside the church there was this hilarious hand on boob statue/plaque on the ground. Apparently the city it removed it at one point and the locals got upset so they put it back! The tour then went on to the oldest Buddhist temple in Europe, completed in 2000! Onward past the Niewe Kerk (New Church), Begijnhof (which is a well-preserved sanctuary for Cathlic nun-like women), the Dampkring (New Europe's favourite coffee shop) and ended at the Anne Frank House Museum. After the tour, since I had nothing better to do and no one to meet I had lunch with the guide and others from the tour and this dish sausage and mashed potato dish. I met a girl called Shannon who is being a nanny in Paris and enjoyed talking with the guide who was from Brisbane. Yay! A familiar accent! I had a pretty chilled out night - just relaxed at the hostel (something most people there are used to) and just chatted with everyone. Had an easy dinner then laid on the hammock for ages before bed. But not before checking my current adventure status.

At this time I was still tossing up whether or not to try and get a train home, just wait for a flight, or make my way literally from one side of the continent to the other for Anzac Day in Gallipoli. I have a flight to catch Saturday morning from London to Istanbul but that's another story right there!

"Serbia is practically a suburb or Turkey, we can walk from there!"

April 19

The ash cloud saga continues! After breakfast I got back on that hammock for quite a while, it's seriously the best thing ever.I spoke to mum and dad on the phone for about 25 mins, thankfully they paid for it and we decided to wait to go back to London. After this I went in to town, walked around a bit but didn't see or do much. After the walking tour there really wasn't a whole lot of sights left to see. So I just took in the culture. I made some tea and relaxed some more - an increasing trend which I am enjoying more and more here. I've been reading the news and they are hoping to open some of the airspace tomorow so I'm hopeful I'll get home and back out to Turkey.

April 20

Due to the reletively unsuccessful nature of my trip in to town yesterday, I decided to have a relaxing day at the hostel. I had a book and I had my iPod and I had a hammock and the days were sunny - what more c ould I want? At some point during the day I hired a bike from the hostel and rode to this nearby town called Abcoude. I had to ride along the highway and the cross over on a bridge but was worth it. This tiny town was really cool and had a population of only about 6400. I explored the town, saw some small churches then rode through it to a park on a small lake where I ate a picnic lunch. Came back a few hours later and the rest of the afternoon was my own!

April 21

Success! I checked my British Airways flight this morning and to my surprise it had not been cancelled. T his was very good news. I was scheduled on a flight back to London tomorrow afternoon, but this turned out to be a much larger task than I first envisaged. But we'll get to that. I ambled back in to town the only way I knew how...slowly and made my way to the Heineken brewery by 1pm. This was by far the coolest brewery I'd been to, and I'd been to a few. It started off with a history of the beer of course including labels, bottle shapes and significant people then showed us a replica of what the vats in a factory would look like with people giving out sample of what it tastes like at each stage. We then moved into a modern looking room where a guy taught us all how to drink a Heineken properly, but what I was thinking was "free beer!" After this there was an interactive video where we were taken on a journey from

the perspective of the ingredients from start to finish of the brewing process. This including a slight spraying, extreme heat and a rocking floor - very cool! The last thing was they had all these pods for you to lay in and watch their ads over the years and then of course, ended in the bar.

After the brewery I walked over the Anne Frank House and was going to go in but decided not to. Why you ask? Well..... I was really tired, and it had been an expensive day already and there was a really long line and I thought I was going to come back with Mitch, Evan and Steve (which I didn't). Yeah maybe I should have just gone in.

When I got back to the hostel I took some photos of the most amazing hostel I'd ever stayed in and started saying goodbyes and thankyous to all the staff who had all been so friendly and helpful over the past 5 days. As I was only booking one night at a time my bed had been taken for this night, so I decided to treat my self to a caravan which was double the price (still only €37 but you know...). It was really cute and cosy and loved having my own room for the last night of my wild adventure riding the magma. Tomorrow is going to be a big day.

April 22

Today I checked out of the best hostel in the world and began my long journey home to Leeds. This included the hostel shuttle to the metro station - train to Amsterdam Central - train to Brussels - train to Brussels airport - plane to London - 2 underground trains to Kings Cross to get a train to Leeds and finally, a cab to the Eldon where Kayt, Emma, Mitch and Evan were waiting for the winner of the Amazing Race! This is because Ana/Amber and Chris/Josh were also coming back today from their volcano extended adventures. Ana and Amber got stranded in Greece - when their flights were cancelled they got a ferry to Crete indefinitely,

and as for Chris and Josh they got a bus to Copenhagen... yeah this volcano really ruined everything didn't it...

As Team Number 1 in the Amazing Race my prize was a celebratory Irish Car Bomb with Mitch and Evan. Half a pint of Guinness with a shot of Baileys in it and then bomb a shot of whiskey, so good! We walked home later that night for one nights sleep before heading off the next adventure with Kayt: Anzac Day adventures in Turkey!

Alone in Brussels

They say the early bird gets the worm but all I got was a flight. This was another tiring day as it involved a ton of walking on 4 hours sleep. The Grand Place seemed like the obvious first stop which was honestly a bit meh. Sure it was good architecture and all that but it's all just starting to mould in to the one memory now. Next stop was lunch to form some kind of a game plan, at which point I decided the the Maneken Pis should be next. The statue is quite hilarious. It's a little kid taking leak (and it's a fountain). It's also smaller than you'd expect (that's what she said), but still definitely worth seeing.

I then followed the map to La Chappelle, Place du Grand Sablon and the Palais Royal. Opposite the palance is the Brussels Park which I walked through to Federal Parliament. Soon enough I was back in the city centre where I had my first Belgian waffle and oh my goodness it was that good. It's self service as well...or at least I think it was...none of the others seemed to be but the guy didn't stop me.

By Emma's recommendation I caught the metro to the Cantillon Brwery. It's a very grassroots, family owned brwery who brew gueuze and fruit beers or something. It tasted really good...but not like beer at all. I then came back and had a nap before going and cooking tea. It had been so long since I had actually been full

April 14 - The day I went to another country for the day: The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

But first we made a stop in a small town called Dinant. We shelled out an extra €7 to go up to this fortress and have a tour. It was a bit odd because the tour was given in both French and English. The guide didn't speak English too well but that's ok, until I can speak French fluently I can't complain. On the tour we saw... well I don't know, it wasn't that interesting. There were some old guns then this room that was on a 20 degree slant. So trippy. Apparently Adolphe Sax the inventor of the saxophone was from Dinant, and they claim it for all it is worth!

We got back on the bus and in another hour we arrived in Luxembourg City. The country itself only has about 400,000 people you can imagine the city will also be small... it was tiny. Katherine and Sandra (the girls I met) walked around for a bit while the older people had a 'cheap' meal. I bought some headphones as a souvenir as mine were breaking and our guide gave us a small tour. After that we had an hour of free time and after 20 minutes...we were done. Our guide found us sitting down and showed us a park/valley where I took some nice macro photos and then it was time to go home.

Luxembourg is really not worth going to except to tick off another country from 'the list'. However, it did make a good day trip and I made some new friends. The girls are both from California and are on exchange in Sussex. At night I invited them out for a drink and kind of accidentally took them to a football bar. I was drawn there with €1 drinks and luckily there was a DJ upstairs. I would have felt heaps bad just sitting there with the football on.

April 15

So, plan for the day: hire a bike and ride the suggested walking routes on my map. A very good plan if the machine accepted my card. So instead I caught the metro to the beginning of the European section tour. In hindsight it may have been difficult riding through an unfamiliar city full of cars but I'm sure I could have made it work.

It began underneath a glass skyscraper in a very poor section of the city. I walked through some markets and soon enough was in "the heart of Europe:" a roundabout, around which all the important EU buildings are. I walked through Parc du Cinquantenaire to another Arc du Triomphe lookalike and on to the European Union Parliament, which is a very impressive building. I tell you what too, it's so refreshing to see some modern looking buildings. The last three months has just been historical building after historical building, not that that's a bad thing though.

Next stop was the comic book museum...wait no, not yet, it's closed for lunch for another 20 minutes. Once in there I learnt that entry was €6, a bit steep I thought. After messaging Emma to see if it's worth it, and she said no I decided to do a Peter Durbin and sneak in for free. The lady at the desk was too busy collecting money from other suckers to notice one poor tourist sneaking past. About an hour in there more than wrapped it up and it was definitely not worth €6!

I then caught the train over to Brupark to see the Atomium, a model of an atom enlarged to 58 billion times its size. Unfortunately the security was much tighter here and I couldn't sneak in to anything. Of course by this stage I was stuffed and came back to the hostel and chilled out for a bit. Walked up the road for a quick feed and back to write this entry. During this time a Californian guy called Josh Choi came and introduced himself to me. He's traveling on his own is also stranded by the volcano.

April 16

The single most stressful and frustrating day of this trip. By now the only thing on the news and on Facebook is talk of the Icelandic volcano eruption yesterday that has sent a cloud of volcanic ash above the UK. I got a message from Scott the night before saying his flight had been cancelled and won't make the football match we had tickets to. At this stage my flight was still scheduled so I went off to Bruges hopeful that I could still get to the game and at least scalp their tickets or something.

Bruges is very picturesque. Every street is cobblestone and is lined with medieval houses. It's kind of one of those places that is famous and very touristy, but there's nothing to actually do there. I thought it was a bit boring but I think that's just because I on my own. I had a really map with the things to do on it. It took me to a museum or 2... one was pretty meh, but it only cost €1 so was a good time filler.

I got back around 5 and this is where it gets interesting. checked my flight status: cancelled. Crap, what do I do now? I was due to fly out in the morning. I'm madly asking anyone on Facebook what they about Eurotrains. I learnt that Eurostar had jacked up the price to £223, they're not silly.

I decided to walk up to the train station with Josh and see what I could learn there. Yeah...Eurostar trains to London sold out until the 18th. I then checked coaches, no dice. We got a kebab and walked through the red light district. After a stressful night I needed some fun. So Josh and I headed to Celtica bar and got lost. I maintain that if he just let me lead it would have been fine but I digress. We got there, got a cheap drink and sat down with these 2 guys who literally spoke as much English as I did French. It was awesome because I got to use all the basic French you use when meeting people. They were hilarious and almost sold Josh some pot. He wanted hash though...whatever. We moved to an ared called Delirium, it was very, very cool. It's this area of 6 bars, each specialising in a different drink and each were packed. We went to a beer one (with a selection of 20 odd), then a cocktail one, then absinthe bar. We also met this really hot Italian girl who Josh was shamelessly hitting on. She got our Facebooks but we'll never see her again.

I really wanted to get out of Brussels because there's nothing more to do there so I jumped on to trusy Hostelworld and booked a hostel in Amsterdam. In amongst all the chaos I also ran out of credit on my UK phone. When I tried to top up I realised I had no money in my UK bank account and Vodaphone only accept UK cards. So it was all happening.