Thank goodness for luggage lockers! We have brought 16+ "pieces of luggage" (I wouldn't call them suitcases because they aren't all suitcases but… ya know). If we had had to bring all that luggage to our hotel, I don't think we ever would have made it on both bus and train, especially with the bitterly cold weather that Amsterdam decided to bless us with today. And we definitely would have never made it up the stairs of our hotel (the Hotel Acacia), which has stairs like a winding, circular ladder. I have already fell down a flight of them, although of course, I fall quite a bit on flat ground so falling on steep steep stairs should be no surprise. I do believe the stairs are like 2 ft. wide and 5 ft. long to go down a whole story. It is a cute and cozy hotel though.

I love Europe! Or, at least as much as I have seen on this trip (really only the Netherlands and mostly just Amsterdam but ya know…). It is simple yet sophisticated. It has beautiful architecture and wonderful food. It is just wonderful (except for the fact that I don't know their language- Dutch- which makes it a bit hard since all signs, messages, and TV shows are in Dutch and sometimes in English but it is not a guarantee).

A lot of people ride bikes here. A lot of people! We even saw one man with his gurgling baby propped up on the handlebars. Since Amsterdam has many canals running through the heart of the city, some people live on houseboats. These are not any ordinary houseboats either; these are extremely long and skinny houseboats. They are like nothing that I have ever seen in the States. But then, a lot of stuff here is like that…