Second rule of budget travel: If you intend to extend your stay, pay for your hostel bed in advance the night before.

I got kicked out of the hostel in Amsterdam the following day because, unbeknown to me, you can’t extend your stay in the morning during the high season. I hauled my backpack and walked to the tourist office in the train station and had them book a bed for me to avoid walking around with all that crap I am carrying on my back. I got a reservation for Berlin while I was there. The ticket office in Amsterdam’s Centraal (yes, it is Centraal not Central) train station is one of the most crowded I’ve seen so far. Minimum wait was 40 minutes. Armies of tourists in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough trip time left to go to other parts of Holland, I wanted to catch some World Cup action in Berlin. I had lunch in an Egyptian-owned shop, went to some recommended book and record stores and bought more crap to carry for the rest of the trip.

This is bicycle country:

Back in my hostel I meet a group of Swedes just arriving in town. We have the usual “backpacker” conversation: Where are you from? How long have you been traveling? Where to next? Where’ve you been before, yadda yadda. At this point I realize for the first time on this trip what a lonely bastard I was. When traveling solo you never actually feel lonely until you meet a group of people traveling together. I’ll still take it though, I don’t mind traveling alone. Its more flexible, you set your own itinerary, oversleep when you want and leave to the next stop on a whim.

In the evening it was time to go check out Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District. No pictures here. Not in the interest of keeping this a G-rated website, I just didn’t take any