Amsterdam and Mike's Visit!!!

Sorry this has taken sooo long to post about...but Mike was keeping me busy all week!!

I went to Amsterdam on Thursday the 28th.  It was a loooong bus ride.  I have however, now been to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. sweeet. We got to Amsterdam at about 10am and we went to the hostel.  We got our keys but couldn't move into our rooms until about 2pm so I wandered off into the city.  I found the tulip museum, a houseboat museum and the Anne Frank Huis.  I didn't go into the Anne Frank house though, I wish I would've gone that morning because the line was three times as long as it was then alll weekend and the 18 euro ticket price didn't help either.  I met some people staying the same room in the hostel as me and we all wandered off together on Friday night for dinner and went to see the Red Light District (in daylight) and stopped in a coffee shop.  The group that planned the trip had a club booked that we got free entry to so we went to that at night.  It was pretty lame and the drinks were ridiculously expensive. So we went to a different bar and just sat around and got to know each other a bit. That's what I prefer to do anyway..I'm not super big into clubbing. :/ We walked through the Red Light District at night to see if there were prettier girls out at night.  They still weren't that pretty.   Saturday I got up and went and wandered the city with the same folks, went to a pancake house for lunch.  I had a dutch waffle...it was sooooo good. We went to the sex museum and the regular museum along with just see what there was to see on a Saturday in Amsterdam.  We got some chinese food for dinner and then got ready for the bar crawl the group had planned.  We set out and went to a bunch of different bars, all the DJs sucked though.  It was still fun.  Sunday I woke up and walked around a bit before having to catch the bus home.  The ride home seemed sooo much longer than the ride there, mainly because I was actually awake.  And we stopped about 3 times before we even got back to the UK.  I finally got back to Uni at about 1am, only an hour behind schedule.

I got back and Mike was here so that was great to come back to.  We didn't do anything the first night we were together, it was late and I was exhausted from being on a bus ALL day.  Monday we attempted to make a proper breakfast but the university didn't have power...again.  so we just had cereal.  I took Mike into town and we walked around a bit enough to show him the town. We were waiting to see if his luggage would show up (it got lost when he flew in, someone else took his luggage and then brought it back) and it didn't. So we got dressed up as best we could and headed back into town to Marco's and had a grown up dinner with wine and everything.  After dinner we walked up to the Water Witch, a pub on the canal.  It was a great night.  Tuesday I spent the morning and afternoon in class and then we went for a walk around campus a bit.  We went down to see the ducks and roosters that hang out down by the water on campus.  

Tuesday night is Real Ale and Cider Club, so Mike and I went.  It was good fun. We went to two different pubs and Mike had a bit of food at one of them.  

Wednesday we went into town again after I was done with class and walked to the Ashton Memorial and the Lancaster Castle. We made some tasty dinner and just stayed in because we had a early morning planned on Thursday.  

We went to Liverpool on Thurs!! We went to the Albert Docks, the Maritime Museum, The Beatles Story and went to see where the Cavern once was.  The Beatles museum was very impressive.  We also tried to ride the ferry on the Mersey River but they were having engine problems :(.  We headed back to Lancaster and got a late dinner in town and watched part of a football game.  We still don't know who was playing but I was interesting to watch.  The food was good and cheap too.  They were out of fish and chips though, that made me a bit mad. We went to the library when we got back to campus and got some books on walks through the Lake District and planned out what walk we wanted to take on Saturday. 

Friday we slept in and did a lot of nothing all day, it was nice.  We were preparing for our big hike! We went to a restaurant on campus and got dinner.  Mike got free chips (fries) because they burned his pizza a bit.  

Saturday we woke up early and set off to Ambleside (in the Lake District).  It was raining when we left but it cleared up by the time we got to Ambleside (the Lake District).  So we set off on the hike as planned.  We got a bit lost for the first hour or so of the hike. We missed a hidden gate near the waterfalls and walked out and around the whole park.  After that it was pretty much smooth sailing...sort of.  The walk was basically straight up hill, there were stone steps in the side of the hill. It would've been a beautiful view if it hadn't been cloudy.  The weather was nice and warm until we reached the cloud line and walked into a cloud.  It got cold, rainy and VERY windy, FAST.  We were soaked before we knew it and nearly got blown off the mountain a few times.  We made it up over the peak and were making our way down on the other side being nearly blown over and pelted with evil cold rain.  It took much long to walk out of the cloud then it did to walk into it.  Once we were out of the rain we got bearings on where we were (which was on the right trail!) and continued our walk down the mountain, cold and wet.  We walked through a very small farming village, through sheep fields, and right next to cows to make it back to Ambleside.  We had just enough time to get a hot drink before we caught the bus back to the train station to head back to Uni. We had grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, warms the soul.  

We spent the last night in just enjoying the time we had left together.  Stayed up pretty late, it was more like a nap then sleep.  We had to be up at 5:30am to go the airport in Manchester. A girl on my floor was kind enough to drive us to the airport since there were no trains early enough.  At the airport we parked on the complete wrong side on the airport and had to walk through the whole thing for Mike to check in.  He wasn't checking luggage so we didn't have to worry about that.  After it got lost for 3 days he wasn't taking the chance of having it happen again. haha. 

 As far as I know his flight set off just fine.  Although while I'm writing this he is still in the air.  It was so amazing to have him here for a week.  We both wish he didn't have to go.  But that's life.  It was great to share this experience with each other. 

 Only less than 4 months til I'm back.  Right now I am working very hard on my papers that are due next week. Then I get a nice long break from school work.  Going to Italy, France and Ireland. I just booked my flight back to the UK today.  After that it's one more paper and finals.  Hard to believe time has gone by so fast here.  

that's all for now.  

To see pictures from Amsterdam and of all the stuff Mike and I did look at my Flickr, the original one.