Arrival!

WOW! The past 28 hours have been full of traveling! I left my room in Aberdeen yesterday around 5:30 and have only just now (9:22 pm) arrived at my hotel in Amsterdam. First I took a 12 hour bus to London, and I had the pleasure of sitting next to a very strange guy!! I was trying to sleep and the guy just wouldn't leave me alone. He was 33 years old and he didn't speak English that well... so we both kinda only half understood each other, and it was very strange. Every time I looked over at him he was staring at me with a creepy smile! All night long ... At one point I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and there he was creepily staring at me... I almost yelled at him at that point, but I just turned away from him. He kept trying to get me to listen to his music too. I had my ipod in and he keep putting his earbud in my face and poking me asking me to listen to his music... I guess he wanted to talk to me and I was ignoring him when I had my own ipod on haha. I don't know it was strange! But regardless I got off the bus and didn't say anything to him and just walked away.

Then I had to find my other bus for my tour, and boy did I have with that!! I had to drag my luggage around London, and I hopped on the tube station, but I wasn't exactly sure what line I had to take. As I was looking at a map a nice worker man directed me where to go... I felt like such a tourist with my big suitcase and map in hand. Once I got off the tube station I walked completely in the wrong direction, and ended up doing a full circle to where I had to go. The map I had was really confusing though. I thought I was going in the right way... But regardless of how it might sound I was pleased by the fact that I recognized quite a few things that I passed while in London. I'm glad Julia and I went there before or I would have been totally lost. I had my bearings about me and made my tour in time.

I met a girl for Australia who is 24 and she is traveling alone as well so we're going to travel around together. I was really worried at first because I didn't see anyone my age on the tour... but it worked out well in the end. There is a wide variety of ages on this tour... From my age, to newlyweds, to a woman in her mid thirties, to retired people... Mostly retired people. I'm the only American on my tour bus... everyone else seems to be from Australia and New Zealand, but that's okay with me. My tour guide seems really great. I can tell that I'm not going to have much internet time here... I'm not even sure if all of the places I am going to go will have free wifi. It seems like I passed several places that have free wifi today, but my laptop was in my luggage so I couldn't get on all day. :( I don't really want to carry my laptop around with me either because I don't want anything to happen to it. So I'll get on when I can, but don't be worried if you don't here from me for a few days... it's probably just because I'm not able to get on. I have a 7am wake up call tomorrow... I guess our tour starts bright and early haha. But my guide seems really great, and he's been telling us all kinds of obscure random cool facts about the places we've just been driving through. He seems pretty knowledgable about the area... tomorrow I'm going on a canal cruise and going to a diamond cutting factory... and then I have some free time in Amsterdam before we move on! So I'll hopefully have some updates tomorrow if I can get onto the internet! Don't worry I'm writing down all of the stories he's telling us so I'll have a better report when I'm in an area that has a longer supply of Wifi... it's only free here for 30 mins, and I feel like I have a lot to do with my time right now!! So sorry for the brief verison!