Amsterdam - city of bikes and boats

How we missed Belgium has to do with our stateside sense of geography, our free wheeling - no plan approach to travel, and just how much fun we were having on the train.

We looked up just in time to see the Bruxxels sign silently glide across our window and disappear. So much for chocolate and beer it's on to Amersterdam! And that's how we travel. What happens, happens. "People plan and God laughs."

Amsterdam appeared as if out of a dream. Bicycles everywhere, canals and boats. Utopia discovered. Stone archways shouldered streets over the gloss black waters as the grand parade of Netherlanders pedaled their way along cozy streets.

Then the dream was over. We found ourselves in a cab being called "motherf*ckers" by an irate or ironic driver - I wasn't sure. Then dumped off at the American Hotel where the lawyer bid farewell. We followed the doctor and his wife to McDonalds for free wifi while the bathroom attendant scowled at us no matter how many McNuggets we bought.

It was all too much for us and Samantha and I wondered off into the square to find our own way in this dichotomous land. The streets were full of pedestrians and bicycles, cars shunned to the margins. As the light faded on the city of dreams hostel after hotel turned us away. Saturday night in September is not a time to simply "grab a room."

It's late now, we are collapsed on the couch in yet another full hotel, exhausted, and hung over, the temperature dropping steadily. We finally call on our American Express card who promptly books us in the most expensive hotel in Amsterdam. We are too tired to care and glad not to sleep on the street.

Fifteen minutes later we have gone from homeless to soaking in a bubble bath with a view of the entire city 15 stories below. Jazz pipes into the bathroom through a Bose sound system, our robes, slippers and king bed await.

We miss the entire next day, we simply sleep through it. I manage to call the front desk and book for another night before tossing myself back into bed for the afternoon. We awake at dusk and stumble our way down a canal a

nd onto a street car. It takes us to cobblestone streets with enchanting little cafes and sidewalk tables. We float over bridges where the soft lights of evening reflect in the water.

We settle in for Chinese on the street. Sipping on hot, spicy soups and cold beers while we people watch, trying to get a read on the inhabitants of this strange city. We have only heard about prostitutes and pot, which completely misses the entire heart and soul of this place. No one ever told us it was a pedestrian and bicycle friendly utopia, with a lattice of romantic canals and cozy, candle lit pubs. It is more romantic than paris and more wet than Venice. The beer is incredible.

We spend the next several days bicycling, visiting a "coffee shop," exploring the red light district with a local friend (and even it manages to be quaint). We sit on the balcony of our cheap hostel, hanging above a canal and feast on spicy asian. We are in love, with eachother, with the city and with this great unplanned adventure through Europe.

Our last few days it rains, the temperature drops and we begin to feel the pull of Germany. We give in to our wanderlust and board the train.

Homeless Americans in the Bowels of the European Union

For two transtastic weeks Samantha and I, backpacks on, wandered from Western Europe to the brink of Eastern Europe, stared over the precipice of western civilization, and declared it good.

After precious little sleep and a pre dawn ride to Dulles airport on the skirts of America's Capital we emerged, stinking of jet fuel and tomato juice, into the labyrinthine corridors of Paris' Charles De Gaul airport.

Groggy, disoriented, and lost we stumbled our unstylish American asses into a slightly foreign land. We waited in line for customs, we waited in line for Euro's, we waited in line for change, then we waited in line for a ticket on the train.

We rumbled past Parisian slums and graffiti. If Charles De' Gaul airport was the Louvre than the colorfully tagged concrete of train tracks and overgrown tunnels was the Musee D' Orsay.

Gare du Nord is a classic European train station. In the lower floors underground tunnels feed trains from outlying suburbs and above, under arched steel beams and glass, modern, high speed trains enter and exit to most everywhere in Europe. These trains would be our transportation, our bed, our living room and our local pub for the next two weeks as we aimlessly tracked our way through the history and architecture of some of the worlds oldest and most spectacular cities.

We climbed from the tunnels onto streets that had no signs, no organization and no street laws that anyone cared to obey or enforce. The peril of an old city is that hundreds of years of random building result in complicated maps but also the complex tapestry of old and new that defines a European city.

We were too exhausted and hungry to appreciate Paris. We ordered food from a menu we couldn't read, sat in a sidewalk cafe sipping surprisingly bad cappuccinos and decided to simply get on a train out of there. But not without buying a liter of Russian Vodka and witnessing a butcher literally and firmly spank a duck to recommend it to us. These will be our memories of Paris.

On the train we discover ourselves seated next to three Americans. Lawyers and doctors traveling for fun. We crack the vodka, their wine and speed out of the station on a high speed train across the late summer fields of France. We think we are headed for Belgium but by some twist of fate or fortune end up in Amsterdam . Our toughest night and greatest days lie ahead.