Days 19 - 21, Perpignan to Paris to Amsterdam

Apparently I thought we were in some place called Perignon at the end of my last post.  It turns out I had no idea where we were and the name of the city was Perpignan.  We woke up there our 19th day in Europe and decided to go to the beach a local had told us about.  We spent a relaxing day on the beach and went back for the second night in our hotel with an awesome name.

Day 20's 10:30 am train got us into Paris at about 5 pm.  Of course there were no trains to Amsterdam available for us that night.  We made our way to a cheap hostel and raided the local supermarket because all of us were tired of eating out.  Cooking our pizzas in the hostel's toaster oven was an adventure, as was dealing with the "cool" guy who downed 3 bottles of wine by himself after not sleeping the night before. 


The hostel itself was terrible but we did meet some cool Scotish women who showed us something we wouldn't have ever seen: Sacre Couer.

The church and crowded church steps

The church is located at the highest point in Paris and provided an awesome view of the city.  At night the church steps fill up with backpackers and street perfomers.  We spent a few hours there but made it to bed early because we had to be up at 5 am for the train to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam

This city is awesome but not for the reasons you may expect.  The city is designed around rings of canals that get wider the further you are from the city center.  Many streets do not have car access and the boats in the canals are used for a good deal of transportation.  Everyone here also ride bikes because it's so easy get around.  It's hard to describe but this would still be an awesome place even without the other attractions.

Our first stop was the Anne Frank house.  It took us forever to get there beause of all of the crazy things we saw on the way.  For instance there was an entire store dedicated to growing weed and interestingly enough they ship worldwide.  They even had some plants for us to check out.  

The Anne Frank house itself was kind of a dissapointment.  We were able to walk around the entire house and see where she hid but the place had become more of a tourist attraction than a place of remembrance.  I could have gone without the HDTV's and sheetrocked walls.  One interesting thing we noticed is that the hiding spot for the family was huge and for some reason we all thought it would be tiny.  The highlight of the tour was at the end, when we were able to see her actual diaries.  Also there were no cameras allowed so I have no pictures.   


Next was the long walk to the Heineken experience on the other side of town.  Of course the walk there was kind of slow and involved a stop at an Italian restaurant.

All three of us liked this tour better than those of Guiness and Jameson.  We were able to see the actual old brewery and it was very interactive.

The brewing casks

Creepy Poster Guy

After the Heineken experience we made our way home while seeing the city.  Unfortunately we were all very tired from being up at 5 am so we didn't have the energy to go out.  We have one more day here (as Mickey is leaving tommorrow) so hopefully we can get it all done.  Adrian and I haven't figured out where we are heading next.  We may have to throw a dart at a Europe map.