briefly in Amsterdam, a first taste of Germany, and Pilsen, Czech Republic

Hello!

We are right now in Pilsen, Czech Republic and the house of a couchsurfer, Ondrej. Its been a crazy week.

We actually accidentally stayed an extra day in Brussels, I guess because we liked it so much. We spent a day in Bruges (if you've ever seen the movie "In Bruges," it pretty accurately portrays it). There was tons of churches, most very beautiful and many canals that ran through the streets. We climbed to the top of the tower from the movie but didn't fall off or shoot anyone.

Our stay in Amsterdam was brief since we only had one night even though we were supposed to have two. It was mostly wandering around the canals. We couldn't do much the next day because it was pouring rain, and we moved on to Koblenz, Germany, a smallish town along the Rhine River.

Next was the ferry tour of the Rhine. Germany seems to love their castles- we must have passed by at least 15 going from Koblenz to Mainz. *Noah takes over typing* We stopped and got off at St Goar which is a little town about halfway to Mainz. The first thing you notice about St. Goar is the ruins of a castle looming above the city on what we'll call a small mountain. We had about 2 hours before the next ferry so we carboloaded on Clif bars and booked it up the hill with our packs. Down at the bottom a tram was loading with elderly Germans who jeered us as they passed us on the way up. The castle ruins were incredible with a few small tunnels connecting rooms and we were lucky that we brought along headlamps. Back at the bottom we all grabbed a "Doner Fladenbrot" which is mystery meats all packed together on a spit that they carve into a pita-style sandwich with salad, onions, and a ranch-ish dressing. Delicious! We hopped back on the ferry and arrived in Mainz around 6.

If there's one thing we've about travel it's that the best way to travel is to be helpless, confused-looking tourists. We got a woman to help us buy our bus passes in Mainz about 13 seconds before the bus came that took us about 20 mins outside of the downtown area where we checked into our hostel for the night. It was in a really nice area with a huge adjoining park that we ate a grocery store dinner in and played some futbol.

Friday we took it easy in Mainz. We went for a short hike at the end of one of the bus lines. Our hotel was right on the Rhine and so we went for an evening run along the river and watched the World Cup games.

It was a relatively long train ride to get to Plzen, transferring in Frankfurt and Nuremburg. We walked into town and met Ondrej, our couchsurfing host. He took us on a quick walking tour of the town and then to an authentic Czech restaurant and pub for dinner consisting mostly of meat in a gravy-type sauce and dumplings. We watched the USA-England game (we'll consider a tie a victory!) and drank Pilsner Urquell.

This morning Ondrej mad us delicious pancakes and now we are on to Prague!

Happy Trails!
Noah and Julie