July 7:  We registered our Eurorail passes we had unlimited travel on the system for a month with some exceptions, the exceptions would entail an additional fee for the train ride. We headed to Harleem, which is on the outskirts of Amsterdam. We arrived in Harleem a little after 2 taking the spur line from Amsterdam; in Harleem we had a good place right in the main square with an old cathedral there.  Mailed the things I bought in Antwerp with Phil’s stuff see how that works out (they got lost). From Harleem we went to Amsterdam and took a canal ride, walked though the town checked out the red light district. The red light district was a carnival very crowded -filled with tourists, partying and drinking spending money -it was intense. The weather was cool and rainy while there.

The canals in Amsterdam                                          More canals and bikes

July8:  After another night, where sleep didn’t come easy. Phil and I went off to Amsterdam. Getting there by taking the outer train to Amsterdam Centraal, taking the commuter rail from Harleem took about 15 minutes. I visited the Reichstag museum, which was very good it had the Flemish masters and paintings from that period of the Renaissance. We also reserved train tickets for our train ride out for the next town. This was an issue for the whole trip, sometimes you could do without these reservations, but they were always good to have, without them you could end up on a long train ride standing in the corridor of the train with no seat.

 That morning we switched from hotel to another because the first didn’t have room for us the second night, they were all booked up. While leaving the proprietor thought we hadn’t paid, and forced me to pay for our lodgings while Phil had already paid. We straightened this out because Phil had the receipt, and I got the cash back. At Amsterdam we visited the Erotic museum there and it was good one of the best and a big draw, there was big crowds in Amsterdam seeing the sites. Amsterdam was swarming with tourists many of them Americans and Brit’s taking in the sites and checking out Amsterdam’s looser legal code.  One of which was that some of café’s sold pot, which was priced by the gram or by the joint. A price for the stinkweed was about 12 Guilders so it wasn’t cheap. Another aspect of Amsterdam is that prostitution is tolerated (legal?) there with hookers in shop windows enticing guys to come in, on certain streets there.  The weather in Amsterdam while we were there was cloudy cool and it rained too.
 Tomorrow was first long train ride, to Hamburg Germany, it took about 5 hours to get there from Amsterdam.