Europe adventure. Day 10 of 34.

Written at Giacomo's house on day 13.

It's almost hard to bring up memories of Amsterdam while traveling in Italy. They are so very different. Rome is just so big, and my experiences here are so different than in Amsterdam. However, I do remember. It was my first morning at the hostel, and since I was switching to a different room for my second night I packed up all of my things and left them in the corridor as I went down for breakfast.

For breakfast, which was a little buffet, I had corn flakes, orange slices and tea, and then found Yugo checking out at reception and asked him what his plans were for the day. He was going to the Van Gogh museum, it turned out. I asked him if he wanted company; he said yes.

After putting my luggage in my new room (which had a lot more people staying in it than my first one), we left the hostel and made our way to the museum. We waited in line for about half an hour, where I met a lovely older lady who was from New York and stopping in Amsterdam on her way to Kenya. She was very nice, with loads of advice about Rome and Florence.

The museum was great. I really like Van Gogh (though that honestly started after the Doctor Who episode) and it was interesting to learn more about his life and see so much beautiful art. Yugo and I shared a pair of headphones with an audioguide that gave more information about select paintings, which I liked very much, even if most of the info was already written somewhere on the wall.

We were at the museum for a good four hours and when we left the warm day had gotten much too hot. Hungry, we stopped at a grocery store for lunch. I got the ingredients to make a meat sauce, because I had some gluten-free pasta left from Galway and wanted to use it. Yugo had less time, so he got a salad.

When we got back to the hostel I saved the groceries for later and heated up my leftover enchiladas for lunch, eating with Yugo before he left. After he went to catch his plane I picked up my laundry (which included my towel) and went up to my new room. There were girls everywhere, their massive amount of luggage sprawled all over the floor. I navigated around them, chatting a bit, and went to take a good long shower.

The room was empty when I got out of the shower. I took the opportunity to change into some nice clean clothes and put on a bit of makeup (just for the hell of it). Then I went downstairs and borrowed a laptop from the reception desk, using it to send out couch requests. For hours. God, that is tiring.

After finishing my computer related chores (besides writing this blog, since you all can wait), I walked around Vondelpark for a little while. Then I came back and made food, got a cocktail and sat with a couple of girls who were studying in Cardiff. Speaking of Doctor Who, right? Or Torchwood. I miss that show. The girls' names were Jo and Kate. I liked them a lot.

Our table was joined soon after by a guy from New York. His name was Tony and he was really cool and fun to talk to. He was traveling around Europe for the foreseeable future and already seemed pretty tired from it all. I could imagine, especially since he was partying the whole time. You never get any real peace or quiet living like that. Hostels are like dorms. The Flying Pig, anyway, was always packed to the brim and the main room (with reception, the bar, the tables) was always playing very, very loud music. It's a bit exhausting.

The four of us decided to go out and get some drinks, which I was happy about. I had dressed up with nowhere to go, and now I had a reason. We found a bar (eventually) and after one beer/cider Tony convinced us to get a round of shots. Each. That's four shots all at once. I chose southern comfort as mine, mostly out off curiosity. Six drinks in I was definitely a little drunk. The other girls had had even more and seemed to hold their liquor as well as me. So not well. Tony, of course, was fine.

We went from the bar to a dance club Tony knew about. Outside of the club we somehow lost Kate and Jo, but once we realized we had already payed the entrance fee and weren't going to go back out looking for them. Instead we danced, and it was pretty awesome. Tony is a really fun, interesting person, and I'm not sure if I will ever talk to him again, since we didn't really exchange contact information that night and he had a very early flight the next day.

Well, more later. It's 2pm now and I should probably get dressed.